Once
by MissingEden
Summary: First rule of Quidditch: Never trust the words of the bludger-addled. But words and a kiss…that’s something else entirely. Something that just might change Harry Potter’s life. Draco/Harry
1. Lies

**Disclaimer**: If I ever become insanely rich and European enough to be considered a credible imitation of J.K. Rowling, you'll be the first to know.

_(a/n: Surprise! Guess who's back to ruin the internet again?_

_No, not scientology. Me! K-san the walking disaster and the considerably-less-loved-than-Marvin mechanical atrocity my grandma swears is really a computer are here to once again remind you why fangirls shouldn't have word processors! Didn't you miss us?_

_So, this is my first story set in fifth year…mainly because I wanted a chance to finally try writing the twins…I do so love those little weirdoes. And so does **SomedayEngland**, to whom this is dedicated! (Look, I filled it with Fred and George just for you…)_

_This is also kind of weird story in the way I've written it, i.e., by ceaselessly listening to the soundtrack of the movie "Once" on endless, endless repeat from pretty much the second I first thought it up. It's in no way necessary to have seen the movie to get the fic considering the plot of the movie has somewhere between jack and shit to do with the story, but the music influenced it a lot and I highly recommend it for no other reason than the fact that it's eight brilliant shades of fucking awesome. Also, I'm obligated to warn you (in case you are mildly retarded and couldn't work it out on your own) that I don't own the movie or music either. Try to contain your astonishment._

_So! Enjoy! Or don't, I mean, no one's forcing you…mainly because I haven't worked out how yet…)_

* * *

Chapter 1: Lies

_So plant the thought and watch it grow_

_Wind it up and let it go..._

_-- The Swell Season_

* * *

"FRED! GEORGE! THE MATCH IS _OVER_, PUT THE BLOODY BATS DOWN! _NOW_!"

Overly the good-naturedly irritated screaming of his Quidditch captain, Harry Potter sighed loudly and wiped at his glasses with his sleeve. Somehow this only seemed to get them more wet.

"Mighty slippery in all this rain, Fred, isn't it?"

"Foggy, too. I can barely see the freckle-faced git I'm hitting this Bludger at."

"OI! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE HITTING THOSE THINGS!"

"Who says I wasn't watching?"

Harry groaned inwardly. As if Ron didn't have enough to deal with. "Just leave off him, will you?"

Fred gave him an evil look, reflected identically on his twin's face. "I'm sorry, were we playing in the same game?"

"Were you here for the first six goals he let in?"

"Or the next _eight_?"

"It's…raining," Harry defended vaguely.

"Yeah. Funny how the rest of us all still managed without flying into the goal posts, though."

"It was windy! And if you think concussing him is going to make him any better at Quidditch—"

"Oh, it won't. But at least we'll get a laugh out of it now."

Harry rolled his eyes. He'd known the two of them long enough to know there was absolutely no point in trying to stop them.

"Just try not to kill him."

He picked his way gingerly across the pitch; between the rain, thunder, lighting, fog, his own naturally bad vision and the approximate gallon of water currently clouding up his glasses, he could see a maximum of about twelve feet in front of him.

"All right there, Potter?" a vague greenish blob sneered irritatingly from just outside his range of vision (as though he needed to see properly to know who it was...)

"Shut up, Malfoy," Harry growled, thrusting his hand into his pocket to begin an absent search for his wand, which he could only hope Malfoy would be smart enough not to make him use.

It was a very vain hope. "I was just wondering," the blonde drawled maliciously, "if you could tell me what sort of flowers Weasley likes. We were thinking of sending him a bouquet, you see, and—''

"Shut. Up. Malfoy." He stepped forward to continue his muddy trek across the field, but Draco stepped in front of him.

"I don't believe I was finished, Potter."

"Yeah? Well, I _am_. Move."

"You know, Potter, I don't much like your tone. Perhaps a few dozen detentions would—"

It was, of course, a complete accident that at that exact moment a Bludger flew out of nowhere and hit Draco very hard on the back of the neck.

It was an accident because it'd been aimed at his head.

Harry watched mutely as his head snapped back, then forward again with a disturbing _crack_ before finding himself on his back with the crushing weight of a semi-conscious Draco Malfoy on top of him. A low groan escaped Draco's mouth, but he didn't stir as Harry squirmed futilely beneath him.

"Get _off_, Malfoy! I can't breathe with you…er…" The words seemed to catch in his throat. The rise and fall of Draco's chest was slow enough to make him nervous, while his own heart was for no reason he could explain pounding wildly out of control. Half-open grey eyes met his own, slightly hazy with something Harry couldn't identify and didn't especially want to. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief at the fact that Draco was able to open them at all. "If you're not dead then _get up_."

"…Potter?" His voice was disoriented almost to the point of slurring.

"Yes. Now get off."

"Are you always this pretty?"

"Wh—_what_?!" A blush crept uninvited up Harry's neck until everything above the collar of his robes had flushed a brilliant scarlet, but no other words had the chance to be spoken before Draco was coaxing his mouth open with his tongue, kissing him fiercely and passionately there on the saturated Quidditch field in full view of anyone with the sort of bionic vision necessary to see through the blinding sheets of rain falling around them.

Which was no one, of course, but it was still completely embarrassing.

"I love you," said Draco, and fainted.

"…think you, missed, Fred…"

Harry started at the slightly muffled voices and struggled anew to get out from under the unconscious boy before anyone saw him.

"…must've hit _something_…"

_Why_ did he have to be so damn heavy?

"I think it was over—_Hello!_"

Harry closed his eyes and sighed.

"Fred. George."

"Harry! How rude of us to interrupt!"

"Do you two need a minute?"

"Or twenty?

"Because we'll gladly come back when you've finished…"

"…or stay and watch if you like—"

"SHUT UP!" Harry bellowed in a voice that under any other circumstances might've been very nearly effective. "This is bad enough without you two making it worse! Just get him _off!_"

"Looks like you've got _that_ covered on your own," George observed solemnly. Harry flushed again.

"He fell on me, you arse!" He didn't know what was making him so furious; he was used enough to the twins teasing. "Because you two _idiots_ thought it'd be a good idea to mess about with—"

"Didn't know you cared so much what we did to Malfoy," Fred interrupted, his smirking tone now edged with genuine suspicion.

"I _DON'T_ CARE! I JUST DON'T WANT HIM LAYING ON TOP OF ME, ALL RIGHT?!"

Another strangled groan rose from Draco's comatose form and Harry said fiercely, "Don't say another bloody word."

OoOoOo

"Accident, you say?"

Harry's posture stiffened at the interrogational tone of Madam Pomfrey's voice.

"Yeah. Bludger came out of nowhere."

"And that's _all_?"

The image of Draco's mouth pressed wetly to his own rose unwelcome in Harry's thoughts. He swallowed thickly and ignored it as best he could.

"Y…yeah. Er. Can I go?"

Eyes that had been narrowed in suspicion since he'd dragged Draco's muddy unconscious body into her hospital wing finally faded into relaxed disinterest and she gestured absently at the exit as she began to busy herself with tending to her patient.

"See, what we're wondering," said George lightly, beside him the instant he set foot into the hallway, "is why you even brought him up here in the first place. I'd've left him, wouldn't you, Fred?"

"Naturally. And yet young Harry seems to have taken undue in interest in the welfare of—"

"NO I HAVEN'T!" His head whipped angrily from side to side, trying to glare at both of them at once. The low murmuring of his classmates fluttered annoyingly around him; no doubt this would somehow be warped into a yet another story of his apparently frequent psychotic outbursts. It seemed he could hardly breathe these days without everyone thinking he was mental. "I was just…you could've _killed_ him…"

"Ah, but the question is, why do you care?"

Harry touched his own lips briefly, covering the contact by chewing hard on the nail his index finger. "I don't," he lied firmly, licking his lips with a scowl.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Voila! (Oh yes. I know at least one word of a foreign language. Praise me!) Well, what did we think? _

—_thoughtful pause—_

_I see. Could you possibly be convinced to put that sentiment into review format through use of that delightful button down there?_

_Much obliged.)_


	2. If You Want Me

**Disclaimer**: If I were J.K. Rowling, I would not be sitting here writing this. I would be sitting here, writing this, and being paid an obscene amount of money for it.

_(A/N: Oh look, children! It's an appallingly slow update! No flash photography, please, we don't want to startle it…_

_What, can't I buy your forgiveness with witty repartee? No? How about with yaoi, then?_

_Yeah, I prefer that too. Help yourself.)_

* * *

Chapter 2: If You Want Me

_Are you really here_

_Or am I dreaming?_

_I can't tell dreams from truth…_

—_The Swell Season_

* * *

Three in the morning was a hell of a time to be thinking about Draco Malfoy's mouth.

Harry squirmed restlessly to the opposite side of the bed as though hoping it might distance him from the thought.

_Why?_ He kept coming back to that word, rolling his own tongue around in his mouth and remembering the feel of the other boy's. No one had ever kissed him like that, or indeed kissed him at all, so maybe it was just natural for him to—

He rubbed his eyes, annoyed at himself. There was nothing natural about it. Malfoy was an arse, had always been an arse, and the fact that he was now an arse who'd had his tongue down Harry's throat in no way affected the being an arse bit. Not to mention the fact that he was an arse who also happened to be a bloke, and Harry wasn't—

His train of thought came to a screeching halt and he tried desperately to think about breasts or Quidditch or _anything_ else for a good six and a half minutes before his mind lapsed into awkward silence…

…and then suddenly filled itself again with the wet squelch of the muddy field under his back as Draco's tongue slipped expertly into his mouth.

He covered his face with his pillow and screamed as quietly as he could manage.

Something told him it was going to be a _long_ night.

OoOoOo

"All right, Harry?"

Harry glared into his breakfast plate as a Weasley twin slid into a seat on either side of him, their faces set in identically impish grins as they tended to be when the pair were plotting something entirely satanic.

"Up late?"

"Troubling dreams, perhaps?"

Harry choked on a bit of bacon. "N-_No_." God, had someone actually _heard_ him? he thought frantically. He should've cleaned his sheets himself…

Tracking Harry's gaze before it had time to flick away from the Slytherin table, the smirks intensified. "If you're looking for Malfoy, he's still in the hospital wing."

"Why would I be looking for Malfoy?" Harry said in the most disinterested tone he could manage. "I'm _not_. And don't you have anyone else to annoy?"

"Ah, therein lies the problem, young Harry," said Fred professionally, folding his hands and eyeing Harry with a deeply serious look. "We _did_."

"And I seem to recall, correct me if I'm wrong, but a certain someone by the name of _you_ telling us to leave off him," George elaborated.

"Which unfortunately for the world in general and you in particular leaves us with a simply _inordinate_ amount of time on our idle hands…"

"…and we do so _hate_ being bored."

They shared a grin that doesn't bear description, and Harry resisted the urge to punch them both right in their identical mouths.

"I'm going to class," he said instead.

OoOoOo

"As is clearly indicated by the goblin riots of the eighteenth century…"

_Would it have been so terribly awful of him to want it? If it was so wrong and disgusting, then why hadn't it felt that way? What was so inherently defective about his body that made it derive such pleasure from something so repulsive?_

"…wand legislation…"

_His hands had been like ice, sliding wetly against Harry's skin, making him squirm as their eyes met. _

"…blah blah blah blah blah…"

_Where else might he have felt them, if they hadn't been interrupted? How easy it was to picture those long, cold fingers sliding under his robes, gliding across his bare body, touching him in ways he hardly dared to touch himself…_

"Harry!" The sharpness in Hermione's tone brought him out of the realm of italics and back to reality. "The lesson's over, you've got to get up now."

She'd said it quietly, but nonetheless a slight murmur of interest had risen among his classmates.

"Oh, what, you've never seen anyone fall asleep in History of Magic before?" Ron snapped, and many pairs of eyes made a point of pretending to drift away. "Are you feeling all right, Harry?" he asked in a calmer, quieter tone when the most blatant staring had subsided.

"Wha? Oh. Yeah. No. I've got a…stomach…head…ache…thing."

His friends exchanged dark looks.

"Stomach headache thing," repeated Hermione slowly.

"Yeah. I think I should go see Madam Pomfrey, actually," he said, pretending unconvincingly that the idea had just now occurred to him. "It…er…hurts. You know."

"Do you want us to—" Ron began, but Harry cut him off instantly.

"No, no, I'll manage. Don't want you to…er…catch it."

"Right. Wouldn't want that." Ron's brow scrunched in a way Harry recognized as him trying not to look worried. "Listen, are you sure—"

Harry was halfway down the hall by the time he finished the sentence.

"Yeah…well. Bye then."

OoOoOo

"Potter, what are you doing here?"

It was a fair question, and one Harry had asked himself about a hundred and twelve times on the walk up to the hospital wing.

"Oh. I. Er. You're…awake," he managed to stammer back stupidly before his ability to speak trailed away. Since when did Draco Malfoy of all people put him at a loss for words? "Not that it's any of your business in the first place," he added acidly.

"Yeah, it is, actually, as it's my peace you're disturbing." He sat up and Harry noted for the first time since entering the fact that Draco hadn't bothered with putting a shirt on. Involuntarily his eyes fixed on the slight straining of the bare muscles as Draco breathed, hungrily taking in the sight with an interest he couldn't explain even to himself.

"See something you like, Potter?" suggested Draco mildly with an expression somewhere between a smirk and a scowl that Harry couldn't quite match an emotion to.

"No! I wasn't—nevermind. I'm leaving."

"What were you doing here in the first place?" His tone was suddenly softer, catching Harry so off guard he answered without meaning to.

"I needed to ask you something."

"…which was?"

"I…nothing." He shook his head, praying Draco wouldn't notice the slight flush that had risen in his cheeks. "Forget it. It's stupid."

"And that's supposed to surprise me?" His tone remained flippant, but his eyes had taken on a degree of seriousness that seemed an ill fit for his personality as Harry understood it. He slid out of bed with no apparent effort to stand within inches of Harry and folded his arms impatiently. "Well?"

"Er…about…about yesterday…" he mumbled, taking an age to string together the few words that would allow themselves to be formed in his head. Draco gave him a look which plainly conveyed his dwindling patience and Harry continued, "well…why did you…you said…and…er…when you…" He paused hopefully, willing Draco to spare him the embarrassment of saying the actual sentence. "You snogged me."

For a moment all was silent. Draco leaned pensively forward, now obscenely close, his breath falling mere centimeters from Harry's lips. "Snogged you?" he repeated in a tone that indicated nothing in particular.

"Y-Yeah." All the breath seemed to have left him and he struggled to get the word out without gasping as Draco's mouth neared his own.

"Potter," he said slowly, "Umbridge is right. You have a _wildly_ overactive imagination."

* * *

_(A further A/N: I know. You'd think with how late it was, it'd be a better chapter. Or at least one that wasn't ninety percent rambling. But it isn't._

_I blame the procrastination weevils, personally…)_


	3. When Your Mind's Made Up

**

* * *

**

**Disclaimer:** Ot-nay J.K. Owling-ray. But we do have the same amazing pig latin skills. Probably.

_(a/n: Ohayo! Or some other greeting if you don't know Japanese or it's like nine-thirty at night when you're reading this, but it was morning when I typed it and I'm hardcore weeaboo, so I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyways. I mean, I all ready did, but…yeah, nevermind._

_So! Not the most interesting chapter ever, but it's the only one you're getting, so try not to hate it too much...I sort of like the next one better…_

_And now if you'll excuse me, the Paranoid Android and I have less astoundingly dull chapters to write. Good day.)_

* * *

Chapter 3: When Your Mind's Made Up

_You see, you're just like everyone_

_When the shit falls, all you want to do is run_

_Away, and hide all by yourself_

_When there's fall, there's fall_

_There's nothing else…_

—_The Swell Season_

* * *

"Potter, what on _earth_ were you thinking?"

Harry rubbed his knuckles and looked at the floor. "I'm sorry, Professor, but he—"

"I would think, in light of our current…_difficulties_," Professor McGonagall said in a tone that clearly indicated the word "difficulties" to mean "Umbridge", "that you could manage to exercise a little _restraint—"_

"But he—" Harry began again, but quieted under the look she gave him.

"It hardly matters _what_ he did, Potter, the fact remains—"

"_Hem, hem_."

Professor McGonagall sucked in a long breath through her teeth. "_Yes_, Dolores?" There was even less patience in her voice than she'd had with Harry. "I'm afraid I'm occupied at the moment, if it isn't urgent—"

"Oh, well, I'm afraid it rather is, Minerva," Umbridge said in an absurdly sweet tone that fit her about as well as her horrendously pink cardigan, inviting herself into Professor McGonagall's office. Harry groaned inwardly as she stepped aside to reveal a second interruption.

Draco Malfoy fixed Professor McGonagall with a look of such profoundly fake forlornness that Harry wanted to punch him all over again. He fingered the bruise steadily forming around his right eye with a sad look, then noticing the professor's gaze was locked angrily on her co-worker, mouthed silently at Harry, _"Sorry yet?"_

"I am already well aware of the situation, Dolores," said Professor McGonagall acidly as Harry debated whether she was distracted enough not to notice if he gave Malfoy a friendly hand gesture or two, "and I think you'll find I am perfectly capable of disciplining my students without your assistance."

"I'm _sure_ you don't mean to suggest that the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister himself is any less than—"

"What I am _suggesting_, Dolores, is that you leave matters concerning _my_ students to _me_."

Umbridge smiled sweetly. "I _do_ think matters concerning the unprovoked, _violent_ outbursts of said students are _everyone's_ business, and mine in particular. As Hogwarts High Inquisitor—"

"_Unprovoked_?" Harry interrupted hotly. Draco snickered. "The _hell_ it was unprovoked, you…I mean…er…" He quieted very quickly under the stares of his two professors.

"Do you mean to say you have some hitherto unmentioned reason for viciously assaulting Mr. Malfoy?" asked Umbridge politely.

"I didn't _viciously assault_ him," Harry snapped. "And anyway he started it! He…well…"

"Go on, Potter," said Draco, grinning wider than anyone with so magnificent a black eye should ever have reason to. "Tell her why you hit me."

Harry bit his tongue and blushed. Very clear images of the professors' reactions to his reasoning flashed through his imagination.

"No reason," he spat finally.

Professor McGonagall gave him a look of shocked annoyance. "Potter, you told me not five minutes ago—"

"I was just going to say…you know…I just don't like him very much."

Umbridge beamed triumphantly. "I'm _so_ glad you see the merits of honesty, Mr. Potter."

Harry chewed hard on the inside of his cheek, nodding mutely and trying to ignore her.

"And that's why you won't be punished."

_That_ caught his attention. "_What?_"

She laughed unpleasantly. "Mr. Potter, you are _obviously_ a _very_ troubled young man. Why wouldn't I encourage you to see the error of your ways? And I think perhaps—" here she put a hand on Draco's shoulder and he grinned maliciously at Harry, "—with the right help, you may well one day reach the level of some of our more upstanding students." She smiled widely at Draco and Harry resisted the urge to vomit on Professor McGonagall's floor. "All you are in need of is a firm, guiding hand to steer you in the right direction. A service that Mr. Malfoy has so graciously agreed to provide."

Harry opened and closed his mouth several times, but couldn't seem to make any words come out of it. He glanced helplessly at Professor McGonagall in the hopes that she might tell Umbridge exactly where to shove her firm, guiding hand.

"I hardly think that's necessary," she began, but Umbridge continued straight over her as though she hadn't spoken.

"And of course, should you prove unresponsive, I've authorized Mr. Malfoy to take points from your house in order to…encourage you."

Harry's fist begged to be connected with the shit-eating grin on Draco's face.

"Can't I just have a detention?" he asked hopefully.

OoOoOo

"Well," said Hermione said carefully in the commonroom some time later, "at least she's not making you do lines."

"Right," added Ron less-than-helpfully. "I mean, who knows how many times she'd have made you write '_I must not beat ferrets…'_"

"This is _worse_," Harry declared exasperatedly. "He's got permission to follow me around all day, did I tell you that? _And_ he can take points from Gryffindor if he catches me 'misbehaving' or basically whenever the hell he feels like it."

"Yeah, well…" Ron's brow furrowed as he searched for some good in the situation, and, failing that, changed the subject. "Not that I blame you or anything, but why did you even hit him in the first place?"

Harry willed his cheeks to remain un-flushed as he recalled _exactly_ why he'd done it. _Wildly overactive imagination, my arse…_, he thought bitterly.

For a long moment, he said nothing, debating internally how much they actually needed to know. "He called me a liar."

Ron nodded in approval and Hermione sucked her teeth in disappointment, and he knew he'd chosen exactly the right words.

He let Hermione's proceeding lecture about the importance of not encouraging people's poor opinion of him wash over him without taking in the sound. His mind wandered aimlessly for a minute before settling, as it invariably seemed to, on thoughts of his least favorite Slytherin…

_There had been other ways of jogging his memory, after all…maybe it wouldn't have hurt to give into the way his fingers ached to be run along the hard muscles of the other boy's chest as he reacquainted their tongues with one another…_

"Harry!" said Hermione sharply for what was obviously not the first time.

"What?" Harry yelped, honestly surprised at the fact that she even existed. "Sorry! I was—what?"

The suspicious look was back in her eyes, and Harry stared back in a way he hoped was innocently nonchalant.

"Are you alright? Really?"

"Absolutely perfect," he said with an astoundingly fake yawn. "Bit tired though. G'night."

And he bolted up the dormitory steps to lie in bed with his pillow over his face and his hand working furiously under the sheets before either of them could say anything to the contrary.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Is it just me or is that the dullest chapter in the history of everything? I'm thinking it's not the best idea to write a Harry/Draco fic containing entire chapters that Draco is barely in…but it gets better from here, I promise._

_Oh, and I'll warn you right this very second: No, this is not going to result in something so painfully contrived as it sounds like it's going to (well, I mean, what it sounds like if your mind resides permanently in the gutter like mine does and you can already see Draco uttering the phrase "six million points from Gryffindor if you don't have sex with me, Potter"). Jeez, give me a little credit, it's going have to more of a plot that that…just not _much_ more.)_


	4. Falling slowly

**Disclaimer**: If people mix me up with J.K. Rowling so often, why can't I have access to her bank account?

_(a/n: What's that, heinously slow-moving plot? You're ready to be updated now? 'Bout fuckin' time…_

_Seriously, this is the honestly the dullest thing since…ever. For Christ's sake, WHERE IS ALL THE YAOI?! And furthermore, why am I asking you?_

_I think I just like screwing around with the supporting cast too much…_

_P.S._

_Just so you know, I'm dedicating this chapter to all the people who had to put up with me forgetting they existed while I was writing it: __**Someday England**__, __**Flanclanman**__, __**Katiesquilts**__, __**Youkai Chick Supreme**__…sorry you guys, I'll try to suck less in future, honestly!)_

* * *

Chapter 4: Falling Slowly

_Falling slowly, eyes that know me_

_And I can't go back_

_Moods that take me and erase me_

_And I'm painted black…_

— _The Swell Season_

* * *

It took Harry a moment to process the fact that two people were looming over his bed, leering at him in a deeply unsettling manner.

He screwed his eyes shut again immediately. "You're not supposed to be in here," he tried vaguely, though this was obviously not true and of course would not have given them the slightest pause if it were.

"Sound sleep?" inquired Fred brightly, throwing the curtains of the four-poster even wider and half-blinding Harry with sunlight.

"_God_, close the bloody curtains…" He paused as a dismaying thought occurred to him. Surely the sun shouldn't be nearly this bright so early… "Hang on, what time is it?"

"Eleven-thirty. Sleep like the dead, you do."

"Eleven—why the _hell _didn't anyone wake me?"

"Oh, they tried. Didn't much help. That's Fainting Fancies for you, isn't it?"

"Fainting Fa—I didn't even _eat_ one of those!"

"Didn't you?" asked George cryptically.

"_Really_ might want to keep an eye on your dinner, mate," clarified Fred with a wink.

"And is there any particular reason," demanded Harry through gritted teeth, "_why_ you felt the need to do this?"

"Well, partly because we've got a new time-release formula and Hermione's stopped us testing our stuff on first years—"

"—partly because we were bored—"

"—partly just because it's funny—"

"—but _mostly_ because we wanted to see how long Malfoy would stand out there waiting for you."

"…Malfoy?" The name resounded distantly in his brain, bouncing off the exhausted walls of his memory until it finally connected. He swore loudly as he scrambled to get dressed as quickly as possible.

"I'd hurry up if I were you," George said seriously. "He's been out there…what, three hours now?"

"Four at least," Fred corrected. "Wasn't at _all_ happy last we saw of him."

Harry did his best to ignore them as he shot down the steps and out of the commonroom to stop inches short of crashing into a very annoyed Draco Malfoy.

"You're _late_," spat Draco unnecessarily. "And you look like shit."

Harry rubbed the back of his neck, color rising in his cheeks. "I didn't have time to—"

"I didn't ask you _why_, Potter. It's a statement of fact." He took a step back, looking Harry up and down with contempt. "Let's start with…five points off for every hour I've had to spend out here waiting for you to finish wanking off or whatever the hell you thought it was acceptable to keep me standing around while you did—"

"Wouldn't exactly have broken my heart if you'd shoved off without me," Harry shot back.

"—five points for being a disrespectful little git—" His eyes roamed leisurely over the entirety of Harry's body as he spoke, inspecting him with a slow intensity that made him fidget uncomfortably. "—a point for not brushing your hair—"

"My hair _always_ looks like this!"

"—a point for talking back—"

"This is stupid, Malfoy, you can't—"

"Yes, actually, I can, and I have, and is that honestly how you think your tie is supposed to look?"

His retort locked in his throat as Draco caught hold of his tie, fingers brushing delicately against Harry's chest and neck as he pulled him closer. Harry's gaze dropped to the floor and stayed there.

"_Look_ at me when I'm talking to you, Potter," commanded Draco flatly, and Harry surprised himself by obeying instantly.

And then nearly choked to death as Draco turned away from him at breakneck speed without letting go of his tie.

"On second thought, never do that again."

"M-Malfoy—"

"_What?"_

"I can't breathe…"

Draco blinked, tightening his grip on Harry's tie instead of loosening it. "Excuse me?"

"C-Can you let go—of my tie—please?"

"Can you let go of my tie, _sir_," Draco corrected.

"What?"

"_Sir_. As in a three letter word designed to remind you of your station, which as of today is a good long way below mine."

"I'm _not_—calling you—that," panted Harry bitterly, still struggling for air.

Draco sneered, sensing a chance to reestablish dominance over the situation. "And exactly why is it you're blushing right now?"

"Because—I can't—_breathe—_"

"I let go of your tie a minute and a half ago."

Harry pawed at his neck and the flush in his cheeks deepened considerably.

"With all due respect, _sir_, you're being a real fucking wanker about this."

"Fifteen points for swearing at your mentor, Potter," said Draco with a smirk.

OoOoOo

From there on the day was, to put it kindly, complete and utter hell. Draco's idea of mentoring seemed to involve nothing aside from treating Harry like some sort of packmule, humiliating him in every way possible (and with his newly granted authority, there were a _lot_ of possible ways), and apparently aiming to take a round hundred points or so from Gryffindor by dinner.

And the worst part was, that wasn't even what Harry was annoyed about.

"Malfoy…" said Harry in a low voice, hoisting his own backpack over his shoulder and shifting Draco's uncomfortably around in his arms. "Can I ask you somethi—"

Already slightly ahead of him, Draco sped up. "Really, Potter, I don't think you're walking slow enough as it is. Why don't you take a bit longer?"

Harry frowned, catching up to him within a step or two; even weighted down with two sets of textbooks he was still faster than Draco. "Look, you can't just expect me to forget about—"

"Hold this," Draco ordered suddenly, thrusting the single book he'd deigned to carry himself at Harry and nearly causing him to drop everything else he was holding.

"Malfoy—"

"Potter, just_ shut up._" There was none of the playful vindictiveness he'd been exhibiting earlier in his tone and he glared momentarily at Harry with a severity that was honestly unsettling before his eyes snapped away to stare at the wall next to him.

"Will you_ please_ stop being such a baby about this—"

"I'm not being _anything_ about this! There's nothing to be a baby _about_ in the first place_,_ all right? You are completely _insane_ if you think anything I say after your stupid friends nearly _killed_ me means—"

"I thought you said you didn't remember it!" Harry interrupted loudly.

"I—" It was the first time Harry had ever seen him fumble for something to say. "You told me," he said far too quickly.

"I didn't. I told you you snogged me. I never mentioned what you said."

Without warning, he stepped suddenly forward and threw Harry hard against the wall, pinning him there with the weight of his own body. "Let me make something perfectly clear," he growled as Harry struggled against him, "I hate you, Potter. I've hated you from the minute I first laid eyes on you. And you are fully fucking _mental_ if you think I have the _slightest_ interest in you, all right?"

The words hit him with bluntness that left him without the urge to fight and he laid himself quietly against Draco's chest, waiting for him to say something else. "Let go of me, Malfoy," he whispered dejectedly when a full minute passed in silence.

The pressure against him receded very slightly, and the angry expression on Draco's face was now mixed more than a little with confusion. "What is _wrong_ with you?'

Harry put a hand against Draco's chest with the intent to push him away, but recoiled instantly as he realized the heart inside it was thumping as wildly as his own. "I have no idea."

And for a long moment after that he wasn't sure who'd kissed whom, because there was nothing in his mind but sharp heat of Draco's mouth pressed against his own. His lips parted slowly against the pressure of the other boy's tongue, opening to accept him as his hands knotted instinctively in the soft layers of that ice-blonde hair.

"Do you remember _now_?" he said breathlessly into Draco's shoulder when neither of them could go any longer without air.

But Draco was pushing him away with a horrified expression. "I…I'm sorry…that was…I didn't mean…" A dark flush colored his face and he put one hand over his eyes to shield himself from Harry's gaze while he recovered. "I should go."

He latched without thinking onto the front of Draco's robes, trying to pull the blonde's mouth back to where he could get at it. "No…"

Draco peeled his hands away with cold professionalism and said icily, "I expect you on _time_ tomorrow, Potter."

"Er…" Harry fought for words as Draco walked away. "Malfoy!"

Draco turned, cocking his head slightly in Harry's direction. "Yes?"

"You…er…you forgot your books."

OoOoOo

_Hate…He hates me…_

Whatever Draco had said or done afterward, Harry's mind was in no hurry to let him forget those words, even at two in the morning.

_He's always hated me…_

The muscles of his heart tensed miserably, and he pulled his sheets up high over his head as though hiding from the memory.

_So why…_

He rolled thoughtfully from right to left, trying to shake the wait of an irrational depression from his chest.

_Why does it even bother me?_

An hour passed.

Two.

And from the time he'd lain down that night to feign sleep to early the next morning when he'd had to feign waking from it, the only thing his mind did was wonder how in the hell Draco Malfoy had ever learned to make him feel like this.

_

* * *

_

(a further a/n: Right, so whilst the procrastination weevils were doing their merry dance atop a heat-exhausted Paranoid Android, I learned something.

_Doujinshi fucks up my characterization._

_Severely._

_Because, apparently, in Japan, Draco is about a foot shorter than Harry, cries all the time and never, ever gets to be seme. EVER. And after like eight hours of reading that, my ability to write him as the manlier of the two completely fucking evaporated and my fist draft of this chapter had him as an emotional tangent-spouting girly man clearly not even in control of his own vagina, let alone their relationship. Which I must say annoyed me a bit, because until I noticed that evidently everyone who isn't me writes this pairing like that, it honestly never occurred to me that Draco would ever in a million years be uke (assuming you like to pretend as I do that his ridiculous and clearly extremely sissy-like behavior in book six never happened for your own convenience (because Harry never cries, does he? Oh wait. Yes. Yes, he does. Like eight times per book.)) So I made him a prick instead, because that fixes things._

_Seriously, is he supposed to be uke? Does the fact that I refuse to have him as uke make me weird in yet another way? Do I really need even more ways than usual in which to be weird? Could I possibly fit any more question marks into this author's note?_

_Huh. Guess not.)_


	5. Say It to Me Now

**Disclaimer**: .rettoP yarrH nwo t'nod llits I, sdrawkcab ti etirw I fi nevE

_(a/n: Okay, remember that whole established timeline thing book five had going? That's gone now. Due to shit I didn't realize conflicted horribly with the timeline until I'd already plotted the whole damn thing out, I have Harry starting Occlumency lessons LONG before he's supposed to. You can decide for yourself why. Blame it on Ron, maybe, or use my personal reasoning of choice: "Boys are kissing and I don't care."_

_Well, that usually solves plotholes for me…)_

* * *

Chapter 5: Say It to Me Now

_I'm scratching at the surface now  
And I'm trying hard to work it out  
So much has gone misunderstood  
This mystery only leads to doubt  
_

_And I didn't understand  
When you reached down to take my hand  
And if you have something to say  
You better say it now…_

—_Glen Hansard_

* * *

"Ron," said Harry matter-of-factly, staring in distaste at the note sitting next to his dinner plate, "I'm going to fucking kill you."

Ron shuffled his feet uncomfortably under the table. "Look, I didn't want to, all right? Hermione sort of made me—_ow!_ I mean we both decided—" he amended, rubbing his shin, "that we had to tell someon—"

"I can't believe you went to Dumbledore because you think I'm having _nightmares_," Harry groaned into his hands, which he was holding over his face to avoid having to look at a certain two people who were obviously a lot less clever than he was used to them being.

"But—but you _are_," Hermione said seriously, though Harry thought he detected the hint of a question in her voice. "I mean, you're obviously not sleeping anymore—"

"—and if you do you're always screaming and thrashing around and sweating and—"

"All right, all right, I get it, shut_ up!"_ It was almost easier to just blame it on Voldemort than to explain to the pair of them the sort of dreams that were_ really_ occupying his mind at night. "Look, if it was important, I'd tell you, okay?"

"_Anything_ involving You-Know-Who is important, Harry!"

"It's got nothing to do with Voldemort, Hermione."

"Then what _has_ it got to do with?"

"The Dark Lord is an inappropriate topic for dinner conversation, Potter," said a voice from over his shoulder. "Five points from Gryffindor." Ron opened his mouth to respond, but only managed a yelp as Hermione kicked him under the table again. Uninterested, Draco's eyes remained locked on Harry. "If you've finished eating, you're going to help me patrol the corridors tonight."

Harry pulled a pained expression, having learned by now that arguing did him no good at all. "You'll have to let me go early. I've got an…a…er…" He sighed, deciding he might as well complete his humiliation. "Remedial Potions."

OoOoOo

"Am I _boring_ you, Potter?"

"Er, no! I was…concentrating." Harry said quickly, looking sheepishly upward as he tried to recall anything Snape said in the last ten minutes. Nothing came to mind.

Snape glowered silently at him just long enough to be uncomfortable, clearly as thrilled to be giving these lessons as Harry was to be receiving them.

"If you find you are finished wasting my time," he hissed coldly, "might I suggest we try again?"

"I wasn't wasting—"

"_Legilimens_!"

Now it was not Snape he saw, but his parents, beaming proudly at him, untouchable behind the cool glass surface of an enchanted mirror that flickered suddenly into the shape of a hundred or so dementors looming in on him before fading to the dark of a cobwebbed, spidery cupboard which brightened abruptly into a torch-lit hallway where two boys were entwined passionately against the wall…

"_Stop_!" he managed in a strangled voice. Let him see something else, _anything_ else, but not this… "That's…_private_…you can't…don't…"

"_I hate you, Potter_." The voice drawled in both their minds and Harry's hand groped wildly for his wand as he struggled to shoo the image from his thoughts. "_I've hated you since the minute I first laid eyes on you…"_

The hard impact of his head on the nearest desk snapped him back into the dimly lit dungeons and he noted with a rapidly darkening blush the strange look on the potions master's face.

"Did you—you heard that?" Harry inquired flat-out, eyes on the floor.

"Yes." His tone was oddly perplexed, but his face became suddenly expressionless, masking his confusion. "What I do not know is why it would be of any particular...significance…to begin with…" His speech slowed as though he were reaching an epiphany.

At first Harry thought his face was breaking. It seemed to be opening in places it shouldn't, strange and white and alien-looking. The corners of his mouth lifted, twitching as though he were having some sort of localized seizure and breath hissed unnaturally from his mouth in an odd, erratic rhythm so downright fucking _weird _that it took Harry over a minute to work out he was simply witnessing the Snape equivalent of _"Potter and Malfoy, sitting in a tree…"_

And it took him less than ten seconds to bolt from the room in hopes of finding a nice, dark corner where he could die of shame in peace.

_"I hate you, Potter…"_ The words burned wickedly inside him, apparently as inescapable as the problem they presented. What decent reason was there for why this had any effect on him at all? He was a _bloke_, a bloke who should not care one way or the other what another bloke whom he didn't even like in the first place thought of him.

Malfoy was an absolute wanker.

Malfoy was not worth getting worked up over.

Malfoy…

…_doesn't want me anyway…_

He shook his head furiously as he ran without direction, fleeing the thoughts that expended no effort in keeping pace with him. His heart thumped unpleasantly and his throat constricted and he rolled his eyes at his own stupidity as his cheeks began to burn against the saltwater streaming from his eyes…

"_Potter!_ Just because you're out of my line of vision doesn't mean you're free to—Merlin, what the _hell_ happened to you?"

Briefly Harry wondered what he'd ever done to the universe to make it hate him so much. There were so many terribly unfair things about having to run into Draco like this, his eyes puffed and red from crying, still heinously disheveled from the memory-invading bout with Snape, while Draco looked as impossibly handsome as ever, flicking his blonde hair out of his face and eying Harry with a truly horrified look. "Are you going to answer me or stand there like an idiot?"

Apparently going the stand-there-like-an-idiot route, Harry swept embarrassedly at his eyes to clear the tears away, but succeeded only in knocking his glasses to the floor. Draco drove to retrieve them at the same moment he did, his hand closing over Harry's as they simultaneously reached for the black frames clattering to the ground.

Harry's heart jolted as their fingers brushed against each other, but Draco wrenched his hand away from Harry's as though it were covered in something disgusting.

"Thanks," Harry mumbled blankly, pushing his glasses back against the bridge of his nose and letting their eyes meet for as long as he dared. "You—er—what are you doing here?"

"Patrolling the corridors, like I said. And don't change the subject. Is there any particular reason you look like you've been eaten and spat up by something since I saw you last or do you just like creeping round corners and scaring the hell out of people?"

"Snape…," managed Harry vaguely, fussing with his hair with a rapidly increasing level of obsession. It seemed suddenly, horribly important to look good in front of him.

Draco's eyes narrowed. "_Professor _Snape," he corrected automatically, "and I thought you were just going for remedial Potions? It's hardly traumatic, Potter."

His tongue had already half-formed his next words before he remembered that this was exactly the sort of thing Malfoy in no way needed to know. "I know. I'm just…crap at it. And he's a wanker."

"Oh for fuck's sake, if you're going to _cry _over it I'll tutor you myself. It's not that big a…" He eyed Harry in annoyance and sighed loudly. "Forget it. I'm not even going to _pretend_ to believe that's what you're really upset about."

Harry worked furiously to keep silent.

"Didn't I make myself clear, Potter?"

He wanted to agree; a simple nod of resignation would have been enough, any gesture to show he was not in fact mind-blowingly stupid enough to keep after someone who'd told him plainer that he'd ever heard anything that they weren't interested; anything that wasn't exactly what proceeded to come flying out of his mouth without any permission from his better judgment.

"Just tell me I'm not completely mad here, all right?" It sounded like begging, but somehow he didn't care. "You can't go on pretending it didn't happen forever, and you mustn't want to any more than I do or you wouldn't have—" The words scratched dryly against his throat and he wondered what it was that made this so spectacularly hard to say. "Or maybe you would. That's why I'm asking."

Draco's eyes were still cold and observational. "You haven't asked me _anything_ yet. I'm still wondering if you've actually got a point in there somewhere."

"What…what I mean is…did it…does it…do_ I_ mean anything to you? Oh _god_, that sounds stupid." He laughed bitterly at himself. "I just…I know you said you're not…that you don't…but the thing is, I don't sleep anymore," he rambled on stupidly, waiting almost hopefully for Draco to stop him, but he merely folded his arms expectantly and raised an eyebrow to prompt an explanation. "I just sit there, most nights, and I think about…I try _not _to think about…but it comes anyway…"

"You think about _what_?" Draco interrupted irritably. "Pudding? Tree frogs? Eskimos? _What?_"

"You," answered Harry flatly.

"Me," Draco repeated in a monotone from which it was impossible gauge his response. "Why?"

"Because I fancy you like mad," he blurted suddenly.

Civilizations rose and fell in the time Draco spent staring at Harry following that statement. He stepped closer, studying his features intently, gray eyes glinting curiously as they raked across Harry's flustered face before saying, finally, _eleven thousand years later,_ "Merlin, you're actually serious, aren't you?"

"It's not like it was my idea, all right?" Harry snapped, covering embarrassment with annoyance. "I didn't exactly wake up one morning and decide what I should really do was go out and develop a…_thing_…for a bloke!"

"So are you disgusted with blokes in general or me in particular?" snarled Draco suddenly. "Because really, if you've got such a problem with it than maybe you should save your confessions for someone with a vagina!"

"Not as if I don't want to!" Harry retorted. "But I—can't. I want you." It sounded a good ten times as stupid out loud as it did in his head. "Forget it, Malfoy. I shouldn't…I should just…go."

Draco caught his wrist as he turned away. "Don't you want to hear my answer?"

Harry blinked up at him as numbness spread up his arm, but that hardly bothered him as Draco swept away the strands of jet-black hair that hung over his forehead, running his cool fingers wonderingly over his face to tip his chin back and give himself better access to Harry's mouth. He plunged his tongue in shamelessly, either unaware or uncaring of how the sensation made Harry's head and heart pound uncontrollably.

"All I was going to say," he mused a minute or so later as Harry gasped for breath, "was that if you _are_ serious, you'll find a way out of the castle after everyone's in bed, won't you?"

"W…what?" Harry stammered. Surely he'd get back his ability to breathe soon…"

Draco grinned, stroking the side of his face lightly as though he were some sort of pet. "I'd really like to think you're clever enough to see that this is hardly the place to have this conversation, Potter." Harry blinked at him. "Tonight. By the lake."

"But how am I supposed to—?"

Draco kissed him quickly on the lips again, and whatever rational strain of thought had been forming was blurred into practical non-existence. "I imagine you'll think of something."

"Malfoy—"

"Just get the hell out of here before I have to give you a detention, Potter," he said lightly before rounding a corner to slip out of view.

* * *

_(a further a/n: LE GASP! Could this story actually be going somewhere?! Honestly, shouldn't they be humping like coked-up rabbits at this point?_

_Oh yes. Yes they should. But they are not, because apparently someone vacuumed all the fun out of my stories!_

_Don't you hate it when that happens?)_


	6. The Side You Never Get to See

**Disclaimer**: There's smut in this chapter. I'm not obligated to be clever.

_(a/n: Okay, I know what you're thinking. "Oh, K-san, I'm one of the five other people who's seen the movie Once, and I don't remember this song being in it! What gives?" And gosh, you're right! It's by Glen Hansard's other band, and I'm using it because I'd run out of chapter names real goddamn quick if I only used the ones from the movie. So I'm using ones by The Frames and non-movie-related ones by The Swell Season as well._

_Or possibly you're thinking, "Smut?! Did she say SMUT? Sweet fuckmothering chirst, SHUT UP AND GET TO THE PORN, LADY!!"_

_Oh, fine. It's down there. Jeez.)_

* * *

Chapter 6: The Side You Never Get to See

_If you come, come alone_

_Please don't take anyone else_

'_Cause we're never alone_

_And tonight I want you for myself…_

—_The Frames_

* * *

Distantly it occurred to Harry that it probably wasn't normal to stare like this.

He stood stock-still in complete silence, vocal cords utterly frozen, his hands knotted in nervous fists among the invisible folds of his cloak.

_Say something,_ he ordered himself silently. _Make words, you bloody idiot…_

Absolutely nothing came to him as he stared at the boy seated less than a yard away.

He looked a bit…_bored_, Harry noticed, sprawled out on the lakeside grass, picking idly at his nails. Harry swallowed uncomfortably, taking a few steps forward.

Draco heaved a loud sigh. "It's no good being invisible when I can _hear_ you coming a mile away, Potter."

Harry pulled back the hood of his cloak and scowled. "If you knew I was here, you could've said something."

"Why?" He stretched leisurely out on the grass, flat on his back, staring up as Harry with a minimally interested look. "If you want to stare at me for an hour, I'm not going to stop you." He wrinkled his nose suddenly in distaste. "And take that stupid thing off, anyway. No one's here."

Harry's frown deepened. "This was a stupid idea," he grumbled, but Draco swiped at his ankle as he turned, knocking him to the ground.

"Sit _down_, Potter."

His expression dropped a further notch toward entirely pissed. "Malfoy—oi! Don't do that!"

Draco raised an eyebrow calmly, not releasing the handful of invisible fabric in his left hand. "I told you to take it off. I don't plan on sitting here talking to myself."

He slipped the cloak off his shoulders, wishing wholeheartedly he'd thought to wear something other than pajamas. "This is a lot of trouble just to talk, Malfoy," he said grumpily.

In a sudden swift movement he was on his back, Draco's hands clenched in hard circles around his wrists, pinning him flat to the ground. "Did you want to do something else, then?" His breath hissed as Draco's lips slid in a slow trail along his collarbone. "Because I'm open to suggestions…"

"St…stop…" Harry mumbled weakly.

Draco made no argument, pulling away to sit cross-legged beside Harry as though he'd never touched him. "I thought about what you said."

"Y-Yeah?" His heart seemed to be trying to kick its way out of his chest, pounding almost painfully against his ribs as Draco picked moodily at a blade of grass.

"I'm sorry about that, you know. I know you wanted an answer then. I wish I could've given you one."

"I wish you'd give me one _now,_" said Harry quietly, almost to himself, but Draco heard it and favored him with a small smile.

"It's just a bit weird, all right? I'm not exactly used to this sort of thing."

A short laughed escaped him at that, his eyes on the pale and unquestionably gorgeous figure beside him. "Somehow I find a bit hard to believe no one's ever had a crush on you, Malfoy."

"Of course they have. But this is the first time I've ever _cared_."

Harry snorted, but Draco caught his eye and held his gaze. "You think I'm joking? Believe me when I say this isn't normal. Usually I haven't got much use for people who go all twitty and moony-eyed every time I walk into a room."

"I do _not_—"

"I wasn't finished," interrupted Draco coolly, and Harry fell silent again. "But the other day…it was like…" A slight frown creased his forehead and he chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully, searching for words. "…you know, I can't even tell you. I don't understand it and I'm the one that did it. I was halfway ready to kill you and then all of a sudden I didn't want to do anything but shove you up against the wall and have my twisted way with you." Harry's cheeks colored at his bluntness, but Draco looked pensive rather than embarrassed. "Which naturally I just dismissed as some sort of disgustingly morbid hormonal fascination or whatever, but…" he paused again, hugging his knees briefly before lying flat again. "Tonight, when I saw you _crying_ like that…" He grimaced suddenly, gritting his teeth. "I couldn't stand it." He rolled onto his stomach, resting his chin on his palm and staring curiously at Harry. "Is that what it's like for you?"

"Er…I dunno what you mean." He found himself having trouble looking directly at Draco while he was talking like this; the words didn't seem to fit him.

"You care about _everyone_." He rolled his eyes as he said it, as though it were immensely stupid of Harry to do so. "All I ever see you doing is worrying about other people."

"Oh, so it's normal not to care about anyone but yourself?"

"Not exactly," he allowed, "but people like me have to learn to…compartmentalize." He gave the ground a blank look. "Sometimes it's a lot easier to feel nothing."

"Malfoy?"

Draco blinked, the deadness in his expression instantly replaced with a thousand-watt smile. "Merlin, I'm boring. Anyway, I didn't ask you here to talk you to death."

"Why _did_ you…" He trailed off as Draco moved forward, slinking toward him like a hungry cat.

"Can't you guess?" He was far too close now, one hand brushing lightly against Harry's thigh so that he gasped loudly.

"M-Malfoy! What—" The words choked off into nothing as Draco's hand slipped casually into his pajama bottoms. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, and Draco chuckled softly into his ear.

"Didn't I make myself clear?" His mouth was warm and wet against Harry's neck. "I said wanted you and I wasn't joking."

"W-Wait, wait a minute, I don't—" His chest hitched as Draco pulled the bottoms down, then off completely, cold fingers sliding over skin already covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He should've been freezing without them, but it could have been high noon in July for all he noticed the cold.

Thoroughly ignoring his protests, Draco pushed him gently onto his back, planting one knee between Harry's thighs and nudging them apart to give himself better access. "Don't you?" he asked innocently, squeezing mercilessly at the clear evidence to the to the contrary. "Looks to me like you're rather enjoying it, actually."

His head buzzed incoherently, knowing he should stop this but not wanting in the least to do so. "Don't…don't do that!" he forced out with the little breath he had left.

He slowed his movements nearly to a stop, Harry's length still enveloped in the warmth of his palm, and rolled his thumb leisurely around the head until Harry cried out loudly.

"Now why would I stop when you like it so much?" He kissed him hard on the mouth and the stroking resumed. "I'm not _evil_, Potter..."

His hands found their way to Draco's shoulders and he grasped them desperately as the other boy's tongue pushed forcefully between his lips again. It was just so hard to _think_ like this, curled helplessly beneath him, his own body as unreceptive to the concept of how utterly _wrong_ this was as Draco seemed to be.

"Malfoy," he pleaded again in a low, breathless voice, and Draco laughed softly into his neck, his tongue and teeth grazing lightly against the tendons there, "just stop, please, I'm going to—" He flushed, unable to force the word from his mouth.

"That's sort of the idea," said Draco. He caught Harry's mouth with his own once more, sliding his tongue hungrily inside and twisting his hand around Harry's erection until he was mewling like a cat in heat, his every breath a high, panting whine and his back arching as far as it could with Draco lying on top of him.

"Please…d-don't…I don't want…"

Laughing again, Draco swept the sweat-soaked locks of black hair from his forehead, kissing it as Harry climaxed nosily beneath him. He smiled smugly, slowly licking the fluid from his hand so that Harry turned away in embarrassment, his chest still heaving.

"That's disgusting," he mumbled.

"Disgusting?" Their lips met again, and Harry flushed at the taste of his own body still lingering on Draco's tongue. "If I'm disgusting for doing it, then what does that make you for liking it so much?"

Harry bit his lip, his eyes darting silently to avoid Draco's. It was wrong, _so_ wrong of him to have enjoyed such a violation…everything in his mind screamed at him to leave, _now_, and never, ever let himself get caught alone with Draco Malfoy again as long he lived…and yet his body was begging to know how soon they'd be able to do this again. And his heart…well, that was something too stupid to contemplate.

Taking pleasure in his inability to answer, Draco slid back to lie next to him, cradling him against his chest with one hand wound possessively through his dark hair.

"Draco?" said Harry in a near whisper at after several long silent minutes.

His fingers twisted gently in Harry's hair and he breathed a sigh that was almost a laugh. "Since when am I 'Draco' to you, Potter?"

"I dunno. I can't just call you Malfoy, can I, if it's like this? And anyway I like Draco better. It's…pretty."

"Don't be stupid. _Girls'_ names are pretty. Mine's perfectly masculine, thank you."

"Sorry. Malfoy, then. I just thought…well. Er." He fell silent, feeling very much an idiot.

"Call me what you like when we're alone," said Draco tiredly. "Just make sure it's Malfoy in public, all right?"

"All right," he conceded. It was better than nothing, and anyway he didn't want people knowing about this any more than Draco did. "But shouldn't we get back to the castle?"

"I don't see why," answered Draco softly. "It'll be hours before anyone notices. Unless you'd rather I left?"

"No." He rested his head against Draco's chest with a sigh, closing his eyes. "Stay. I want you to stay with me."

And, stroking his head gently as he dozed off, Draco couldn't help but get the feeling he meant for a lot longer than just tonight.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Man, I had to use the word "erection"…I feel gross now._

_And I really can't think of anything to ramble about, because posting smut always makes me feel a bit shifty. So you should most definitely write me a nice review to build-up my teeny tiny store of self-esteem, should you not? Or even a completely horrible one if you really want to, but that'll just make me cry and then everyone else will be mad at you because I won't write smut anymore.)_


	7. This Low

**Disclaimer:** Come on, are you really surprised my half-assery extends to disclaimers?

_(a/n: And so I reach a new level of lazy! Well, actually this time it was almost mostly not my fault sort of, because my mother grounded me for no reason in particular, but I still probably could've written this in a notebook or something…but I didn't. I just waited for my word processor like the lazy ass I am!_

_Have I used up all your forgiveness yet? )_

* * *

Chapter 7: This Low

_We made a plan that was subject to change_

_So whatever way it works out, we both get the blame_

_In the arms of this low_

_And you took the wind right out of my sails_

_By sweating me out on all the little details_

_In the arms of this low_

—_The Swell Season_

* * *

"Potter."

"Nnngh."

"Potter, get up."

"G'way. 'M sleepin'."

"Potter," a voice breathed in his ear with a sweetness that sent a long shiver down his spine, "if you don't get off your lazy arse this second so help me Merlin I will make you wish you'd never been born."

He opened one eye experimentally; it was still nearly pitch dark, with only the faintest traces of the impending sunrise lightening the horizon. Struggling to sit up, he yawned hugely, the figure in front of him fading in and out of focus.

"Glasses," he said, his speech still slightly slurred. The black frames were shoved roughlyinto his hand and he frowned tiredly as he shoved them back onto the bridge of his nose. "Wha…" He yawned again, stretching his arms over his head, his mind still muddled thickly from sleep. "What time is it?"

"Quarter past four."

"Great. Wake me up in three hours, will you?"

A cold hand seized his collar before he could sink back into a lying position. "Get. Up. _Now_."

He blinked at the person attached to the hand, closing his eyes for half a minute or so, then opening them again. "You're…not Ron."

Cold gray eyes met his own. "If you've been with doing with Weasley what you did with me, I sincerely pity Granger."

Harry cocked his head in confusion, yawning again and trying to make sense of his surroundings. Not that he wasn't welcome, but Draco Malfoy _really_ shouldn't be in his bed (which, now that he thought of it, felt an awful lot harder than usual)…and he didn't remember there being quite so much grass in the dormitory last he'd—

Oh.

_Oh_.

He yelped loudly as though he'd been kicked, pulling his shirt down as far as it would go to cover himself while he contemplated the mystery of where his pants had got to. "M-Malfoy!"

"Yes. M-Me," he mimicked, throwing a pair of wadded-up pajama bottoms at his head. "Get dressed and get out of here. If anyone sees us together I'm going to murder you."

"No one's going to see _me_," Harry grumbled, snatching up his cloak with a scowl. Draco cocked an eyebrow in annoyance.

"Potter, what _are_ you doing?"

"Getting—dressed—" Harry puffed out in a series of irritated breaths as he struggled to change under the safety of his Invisibility Cloak.

"Don't you think that might be a bit easier if—"

"I don't want you seeing my…" He paused, flushing slightly. "Just turn around or something!"

"You _can't_ be serious."

Harry gave him a dangerously stubborn look, curling his bare legs defensively under the cloak.

"You are of course aware of how completely mad this is," said Draco irritably, folding his arms as he turned away. "I've already seen—"

"I _know_!" he growled, thrusting his hands into his pockets only to find he'd put his pants on backwards. "D'you think I'm ever going to be able to _forget_ that?"

"Do you want to?"

Harry swallowed uncomfortably; Draco had turned suddenly to face him again, all emotion thoroughly masked, gray eyes deep with concentrated analysis. "Wh-What?"

"Are you sorry you let me do it, then?"

"No!" he said immediately. "That's not what I meant. I just…" He lowered his voice as his cheeks reddened for the millionth time. "…I've never done anything like that before."

He'd half expected Draco to burst out laughing, but his expression was merely politely curious. "No?"

Harry flushed, feeling stupid. "Well…I mean, not with another…just by myself, really…but it wasn't anything like that."

Draco eyed him curiously for a minute. "Hm. Thought you would've by now. Bit repressed, aren't you?"

"Or maybe you're just a pervert," Harry muttered in a low voice. Draco snickered.

"It's within the realm of possibility. Now come on, people are going to start looking for us..."

Pulling his cloak around his shoulders, Harry frowned an invisible frown. "No they _aren't_. It's four in the morning, no one's doing anything except us. What's the bloody rush?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "You're absolutely right, Potter. Let's just stand out here in the cold until someone has the good grace to catch us in the act, shall we?"

"That's not what I—"

"I _know_ what you meant. Look, what would you do if someone walked by right now and saw us? Like, that great hairy _thing_ you and you stupid friends are always hanging around—"

"Hagrid," Harry corrected stiffly. "He's got a name, Malfoy, you can't just—"

"Hagrid, then, if you insist—what exactly would you do if he walked round the corner right now and saw us together?"

"Well, nothing, I've got my invisibility cloak—"

"Let's say you've—you've tripped over a rock or something, and it's come off. Now he's seen you _and_ he knows you were trying _not_ to be seen."

"I dunno, hide somewhere, run away or something—"

"Ah, isn't that suspicious! Now not only have you been seen in questionable company, but the fact that you bolted like a startled rabbit at the merest hint of—"

"All _right_," Harry growled finally. "I'm not stupid, I know it'd be bad if someone saw us."

Draco breathed a small laugh. "No, I don't think you _do_ know, Potter. I think you've got absolutely no idea how bad it would be." His mouth widened to a grin at the thoroughly confused expression on Harry's face. "Look, are you coming or do I have to get _really_ cross with you?"

"I…er. Fine. Coming," said Harry with a resigned frown, feeling this resolved absolutely nothing.

OoOoOo

"And just where were we last night?"

Harry's fork made dangerous contact with the back of his throat and he began to choke quietly on his breakfast as Fred and George sat uninvited in the places just vacated by Ron and Hermione. "D…Dunno what you're talking about," he coughed through a mouthful of egg.

"Oh, come now, Harry, don't insult our intelligence," chided Fred. "We were in your dormitory last night."

"What were you doing in my dormitory?"

"That's beside the point," said George professionally. "And imagine our surprise—"

"—shocked, we were, absolutely _shocked_—"

"—at the fact that a certain student was not if fact cuddled cozily amongst his blankets like a good little boy—"

"—how _astonished_ we were to discover that our dear little friend was in fact _nowhere to be found_—"

"Shut up," hissed Harry in a low voice. "All right. I snuck out last night. What're you going to do, report me?"

George pulled a horrified face. "You _wound_ me, Harry, to suggest I would sink to such betrayal. I'm very insulted right now, aren't you, Fred?"

"Heartbroken."

"I mean, here I make a friendly inquiry and—"

"Look, do you _want_ something?" snapped Harry, cutting him off.

Fred gave him a grin that radiated deepest evil. "Just curious what you were up to."

"And it's really in your best interest to tell us," added George casually. "Because we're going to find out anyway."

Harry gave the pair of them a cold smile, dropping his fork with a light clatter and getting to his feet. "Right. Best of luck with that."

"Oh, we won't need it!" called Fred cheerily as Harry stormed away.

OoOoOo

"I question, Potter, whether you have gone suddenly deaf since I saw you last?"

"What?" said Harry in a spacey sort of voice, blinking half a dozen times and struggling to remember exactly what he'd been doing before he'd blanked out. "Er, no! Sorry, what?"

Snape's lip curled menacingly. "Assuming you are, in fact, capable of hearing, then I wonder why it is you seem to be sitting with Granger and Weasley when I have clearly said that you will be working with Malfoy today?"

Harry's eyes darted a few tables over; the sullen look on Draco's face seemed to confirm this.

"Professor, I don't think—"

"When I desire your opinion of how to teach my class, Malfoy, I will ask for it. _Move_, Potter."

Harry made to argue further, but Draco silenced him with a look. Mutely he gathered his books, avoiding Ron and Hermione's questioning eyes, and took the seat next to Draco's.

Neither of them spoke as the class busied itself with making the assigned potion, but as the din of their classmates grew sufficiently to cover most of their conversation, Draco said very, very quietly, "Anything you'd care to tell me, Potter?"

"He knows," said Harry flatly. "I'm not allowed to tell you how."

Draco risked giving him a quick, incredulous look. "You're not _allowed_—?"

"No. I'm not."

Draco's eyes returned immediately to the roots he was dicing, his stance stiffening coldly. "How much does he know, exactly?"

"Just that I…you know…how I feel. And he knows we—" he dropped his voice still further, as though divulging a state secret, "—_kissed_—" He paused thoughtfully, his brow creasing. "But nothing after that…so he must still think you hate me…so he's just doing this to—oh, that _wanker_!"

"_Shh!_" Draco ordered sharply. "People are going to here you."

"Sorry."

Draco sucked in a long breath through his teeth. "Don't apologize. If you can't talk quietly, just don't talk at all."

"I said I was sorry, Draco—"

"_Malfoy,_" he corrected in an angry whisper. "You can't call me that in public, Potter, we've been over this!"

Harry continued to dice his roots mechanically, chewing hard on the inside of his cheek to keep any emotion from showing in his voice. "Right. Sorry."

Draco sighed. "Look, I know you think I'm being an arse, but if this is going to work, things need to be done a certain way."

"Right."

"You know as well as I do—"

"Yeah, I do," Harry spat crossly. "So you can stop reminding me every eight minutes, all right? I _know_."

Draco glanced sideways at him, sighing again. "Now you're mad at me."

"No I'm not."

"You're biting your lip right now because you want to yell at me and you can't. Your shoulders are tense because your arms would really like to reach out and strangle me. And you're not looking at me because if you do you won't be able to stay as angry as you'd like to be. Is that about right?"

"No," Harry lied stiffly.

"Oh, wonderfully convincing, Potter." Harry could hear the smirk in his voice. "I'll have you know all this resistance is terribly arousing…"

Harry's knife scraped upward at a sharp angle, sinking painfully into the flesh of his index finger.

"I was only joking, Potter, don't look so—" Draco's smile faded as he noticed the blood spilling from Harry's hand.

"Professor, Potter needs the Hospital Wing!"

"No, I d—"

"I wasn't asking you. Professor?"

Snape didn't raise his eyes from the papers on his desk, waving a disinterested hand in their general direction.

OoOoOo

"Are you insane?" Harry demanded the moment they were out of the classroom.

"Be _careful_, you've got to keep that elevated…"

"My hand is fine, Malfoy. I barely nicked it."

"Here, let me see it—"

Harry pulled his hand out of Draco's reach with a scowl. "You don't think that looked a little suspicious, Malfoy?"

"Merlin, it's still bleeding…come on, we need to—"

"_Draco!_ Can you _shut up_ about my stupid hand, please?"

Draco blinked, slightly startled by the use of his first name. "Hm?"  
Harry put the hand that wasn't bleeding to his temple and sighed heavily. "I don't understand you, Malfoy. Half the time you don't want me anywhere near you, but you're willing to let everyone see you panicking over _that_?"

"It's…different," said Draco unhelpfully.

Harry spared him an annoyed glance. "No it isn't."

"It_ is_," said Draco firmly. "I don't like it…I hate the thought of you being hurt, all right? Even if it's just a, a nick or whatever, you were bleeding and—I dunno—oh nevermind."

"You were scared," said Harry with a tiny smile.  
"I—I wouldn't say that." He turned his head, avoiding Harry's gaze wherever it went, and folded his arms moodily.

Grinning wider even as Draco scowled, Harry kissed him tentatively on the cheek. "Nice of you to worry."

"Shut up," Draco growled as Harry trailed him happily up to the hospital wing.

* * *

_(a further a/n: I really like the word wanker, apparently. _

_Really, this chapter is so boring, that was the only observation I could think of._

_Aren't you glad you wasted twelve seconds reading this author's note?_

_I bet you are.)_


	8. Lay Me Down

**Disclaimer**: I'm a full month late posting this and no one seems to have sent me a letter bomb. We all know the _real_ J.K. could never pull that one off.

_(A/N: Oh…heh…hey guys. What's up?_

_Okay. Whoa. Put down the torches and pitchforks. I have several VERY good reasons for why I've fallen off the face of the internet for the last month._

…

_Oh, what, you expect me to come up with them NOW?_

_Um. Well. You see, I had this thing, and…I…uh…_

_All right, fine. I was sleeping most of that time. But I wrote the longest chapter in the history of long to make up for it! And there's smut! I even used the word "erection" again, just for you!_

_Oh god, please don't kill me…_

_P.S._

_This obscenely long chapter is dedicated to the unfathomably awesome __**EdibleDarkMark**__, without whom I probably would've abandoned this fic for real.)_

* * *

Chapter 8: Lay Me Down

_And if you wanna stay with me,_

_then let me know before it's light_

_And I, I will recoil myself_

_Into the darkest night…_

—_The Frames_

* * *

"It's getting too bloody cold for this."

Draco removed his mouth from its marginally preferable position on Harry's neck and rolled his eyes. "Do you _ever_ stop talking, Potter?"

"I'm serious," Harry continued in a slightly weaker voice as Draco's lips nudged at the hollow behind his ear. "What if it…er…freezes…off…or something?"

Draco traced his fingers lazily along the waistband of Harry's pajamas. "Want me to keep it warm for you?"

"W-Well I—nngh! Draco…" Whatever sentence he had previously planned was engulfed instantly in a quiet moan as Draco gently palmed the rapidly stiffening bulge at the front of his pants.

Harry flushed immediately; over a fortnight of this sort of thing hadn't gotten him any more used to it.

"Nnn…Draco, wait…I don't…ah!"

"Yes you _do_. And frankly it's a bit rude of you to keep coming here every night and telling me how much you _don't_ like it." He pulled his hand away and Harry groaned with frustration. "Have you got any idea how _annoying_ that is?"

Harry sat up, shivering slightly in the cold. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—well. You know. And I do like it. Really. I just—" He struggled for some way of wording this without offending the other boy horribly. "I just don't think I'm allowed to do this with another bloke."

Draco stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment.

"Those_ muggles_—" he said in much the same tone as one might say "those cannibalistic baby rapists" "—told you that, didn't they?"

"No," Harry lied firmly. Draco was the last person who needed any encouragement on the intense-hatred-of-muggles front. "But—er—other people—_normal_ people do this with girls, don't they?"

His face twisting into an angry sort of grin, Draco pounced forward, pinning Harry to the cold ground.

"Have I told you recently that you spend entirely too much time worrying about other people, Potter?"

Harry's mouth opened and shut wordlessly with a sharp intake of air as Draco's mouth slid down from his own, exploring the contours of his body at a tortuous pace; warm, wet lips touched deliciously against his neck, his chest, his stomach, pausing thoughtfully at his hipbone before parting to allow an experimental lick at his inner thigh, making Harry gasp aloud.

"Wh-What are you doing?"

"Checking you for frostbite."

Harry's loud, ragged breaths clouded the air and his hands tensed nervously around Draco's shoulders, unsure whether to pull him closer or push him away.

"Ah…st...stop…"

Lifting his head briefly, Draco cocked an annoyed eyebrow at him. "Sorry?"

"Th-This is _embarrassing_…"

"No it isn't. Now be quiet or I really _will_ stop."

That kept Harry quiet; much as his mind was forcing him to protest, the last thing he actually wanted was for Draco to pull away again.

Grinning evilly, Draco lowered his head once more, engulfing the shivering boy's length in the warm moisture of his own mouth.

Harry stopped breathing for a solid fifteen seconds.

"_Draco!_"

"Shh."

Harry was fairly sure he'd cracked his head open considering how hard he'd thrown it back against the ground, but Draco paid this no attention whatsoever, one hand flat on Harry's stomach and the other wrapped loosely around the base of his erection as Harry's fingers knotted tensely in his hair.

Harry's breath hissed minutely and his hips drove involuntarily upward, blood pounding in his ears. As much effort as he'd recently been putting toward familiarizing himself with the frictionless velvet of the other boy's mouth, not a single thing he'd ever experienced in the whole of his life even qualified to exist in the same universe as what Draco was doing to him now. Again the blonde took no notice, his tongue teasing lightly around the head while his fingers worked delicately at the few inches not already encapsulated by his mouth. This was entirely too much—it seemed mere seconds had passed before he was crying out loudly, shuddering wildly against the arms Draco proceeded to wrap around him.

"Shh..." he said again, laughing quietly as Harry continued to shiver lightly in his arms. "Merlin, you don't last long, do you?"

"Sh…shut up…" Harry murmured into his chest.

Draco kissed his forehead and laughed again. "Are you warm enough yet?"

Harry said nothing, his face still glowing scarlet in the dim moonlight.

Icy fingers caught a firm hold on his chin, forcing it up. "Potter."

Harry stared so hard into his peripheral that it started to give him a headache. "…what?" It barely even qualified as a mumble.

"Look at me."

He kept his eyes half closed, glancing sidelong at the other boy as though the sight were burning his retinas, and said very, very quietly, "What about you, then?"

His hands left Harry's face to flutter absently through his hair. "Hmm?"

"Just…you're always doing that…_stuff_…" he blushed again, but pointedly refused to call it anything else, "to me, but _you_ never get anything out of it."

"What are you on abou—?"

The sentence went unfinished as Harry put a tentative hand against Draco's chest, sliding it downward over his stomach to rest questioningly against his thigh.

"I mean…shouldn't I…"

Draco caught his wrist, whipping it away in a grip like irritable iron. "No. No, Potter, you should not."

Baffled, Harry tugged his hand away, but Draco's fingers remained locked around his wrist. "My arm, Malfoy," he said in a voice nearly silent with embarrassment.

Draco blinked, releasing him without the slightest change in expression. "It's late," he said absently, although it wasn't. "We should get back."

Far too embarrassed to object, Harry had his cloak on and was off toward the castle before Draco said another word.

OoOoOo

"What're you doing?"

Harry hurriedly shoved the Marauder's Map into his backpack before Ron noticed the worried way in which his eyes had been locked on the Slytherin common room. "Nothing. Haven't you got an essay?"

"Yeah."

"Well, shouldn't you be _writing_ it?"

Ron cocked a mildly annoyed eyebrow at him. "You've got the same one. And at least I haven't been sulking in a corner for the last day and a half."

Harry scowled bitterly at him for nearly a full minute before saying a tight, pointed tone, "Shut your fucking face, Ron."

"Are you two bickering again?" inquired a stack of books and parchment from behind which a few strands of bushy brown hair were vaguely visible. "Honestly, old married couples pick fewer irrelevant fights than you…"

"It's a girl," said Ron emphatically. "I remember Neville getting like this last month about—"

"Shut up, Ron. I have _not_ got a girlfriend."

"Then what are you sneaking out all the time for? And don't bother saying you aren't, I sleep about twelve feet away from you, _everyone's_ noticed. 'Course _they_ probably think you're out sacrificing kittens to a glossy 8x10 of You-Know-Who, but…" He shrugged. "Dunno why you wouldn't just_ tell_ me. Even if it _is_ Cho." His face seemed to indicate that this was not a happy prospect. "I mean, she's a bit, you know, _weepy, _but—"

Hermione chewed silently on the end of her quill, giving Harry a look which suggested that a detailed description of precisely what he'd been up to the previous night was written on his forehead in hot pink capital letters. "Ron," she said after letting the redhead prattle on awkwardly for a few minutes, scratching a few words onto a spare scrap of parchment and stuffing it into Ron's hand, "would you go find me this book, please?"

Ron stared at the parchment in distaste. "Did you break both your legs in the last eight minutes? What do you need me to do it for?"

Hermione flashed him a particularly deadly look. "Oh, I don't know, Ron. Perhaps because I've got twice the course load you do. Perhaps because in addition to the four essays _I've_ got due, I'll have to spend an extra twenty minutes fixing everything that's wrong with the whole whopping one essay _you've_ been assigned this weekend. Perhaps because I'd like five bloody minutes to—"

"All _right,_ Merlin, you don't have to bloody shout, I'm _going_!"

"How long do you think it'll take him to find that book?" asked Harry as Ron disappeared, grumbling, into the sea of bookshelves.

"You mean how long will it take him to work out Madam Pince took that book out to be mended a week and half ago," corrected Hermione solemnly. Harry snorted, but Hermione remained serious. "Now really, are you going to tell me something or am I just sending him away because I'd like to hear the sound of my own thoughts for once?"

Harry put his hands behind his head, rocking his chair slightly. "You can't laugh," he warned.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Is it going to be funny?"

Harry sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I just sort of want your advice about something. A…a girl something. Sort of. Okay?"

"So you _were_ lying to Ron?"

"No! I mean, not exactly…it's complicated…just please don't tell him I said anything, all right?"

She nodded briefly, looking more bewildered than ever.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably for a minute. "Right. So. Say there's this…girl. And a boy. And they've been sort of, you know…involved. Physically."

"You had sex?" asked Hermione flatly, trying to squeeze a normal sentence out of his rambling.

Harry choked briefly on a mouthful of air and disturbing dialogue. "Wha—_no_! I mean, we sort of—erm—look, anyway, say that if, er, when they were being, you know, physical, the…the boy is more sort of the one doing all the…physic-ing. And the…girl…thinks…_she_…should do something back, you know? Because she wouldn't want him to think it's one-sided or whatever and she really does like him and it's no fair for him to never get any satisfa—anyway, if the boy sort of, er, I dunno…like…yelledat her for it or something, what _exactly_ would that mean?"

Hermione was silent for a long moment.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"You're the girl, aren't you?"

"I…" he sighed, biting his lip nervously. "…yeah."

She tapped her quill absently against the table. "You're gay?"

"Well. I dunno. I mean, how can you tell, if you only like one person?"

"Is that person a _boy_?"

"I_ mean_," Harry sighed, "I don't look at any other blokes like that. Girls either." He sighed again. "Only him."

Hermione's face twitched slightly.

"'_Mione!_ You promised!"

"I'm _sorry_!" she choked out in a fit of very un-Hermione-ish giggling. "It's just so…_cute!_"

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, gritting his teeth a little. "That's…not the word I'd use."

Hermione grinned. "So who is it, then?"

"'Mione, just what the hell do you need a book on wand legislation for anyway, we fished with that weeks ago!" Ron called in voice that was probably enough to get him strangled by the librarian before Harry had even begun to consider responding, throwing it down in front of her with an impatient look.

Hermione stared at him with no small amount of confusion. "Is this—wasn't it being mended?"

"Well, yeah. Old bat didn't want to give it up at all. Got a bit cross about it, really." He scratched the back of his neck, flushing slightly. "I've, er, I've got detention later, actually…"

"Can she even do that?" asked Harry, immensely glad for the change in subject.

"I don't think so…" said Hermione, clearly rifling through her mental catalogue of every rule ever to exist. "Come on, Ron, I'll tell her it was my fault."

"No! You're a prefect, 'Mione, I don't want you in trouble too!"

Hermione rolled her eyes, standing up to tug her friend toward the front desk. "We're _both_ prefects, you…ugh, nevermind. Come on."

Harry rolled his eyes, laughing very quietly, but hardly had the time to put quill to parchment before another distraction made itself present.

"_Cute_. She thinks we're _cute_."

Harry ground his molars irritably. "Just how long have you been lurking behind that shelf, Malfoy?"

Draco grinned winningly at him, sinking gracefully into Hermione's vacated seat. "Just keeping up with my civic duty."

"Spying, you mean."

Draco shrugged as if to indicate he did not see much difference between the two. "Anyway. About last night."

Harry stopped pretending to work on his essay and looked cautiously up at the boy seated across from him. "Yes?"

"It…I…I didn't mean anything by it, all right? And I'm…sorry…if it bothered you. I just…I don't know if it's a good idea, what you wanted."

Harry's eyes drifted back to his parchment, his cheeks turning a deep scarlet. "Oh. Er. Right. Sorry. I just thought you wanted…erm. Right."

Draco put his hand over Harry's as discreetly as possible. "Potter," he said in a low, breathy voice that made Harry shiver more effectively than any change in climate ever could, "if I was only thinking about what _I_ wanted, I'd bend you over this table and take you right now."

Harry crossed and uncrossed his legs several times, blushing furiously. "D-Don't_ say_ things like that. It's—"

"It's _what?_" Draco demanded in a furious whisper. "Go on, Potter, tell me I'm disgusting again. I don't_ care_ and obviously you don't either." His eyes narrowed further and Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Does it _feel _disgusting when I touch you? Because you honestly didn't seem too repulsed when I had your—"

"Malfoy, say one more word and I swear to god I will _kill you where you stand._"

"I'm sitting."

_"You know what I mean."_

Abandoning discretion, Draco cupped his face gently with both hands. "Potter. Listen to me. I want what you want. But that doesn't make it any less of a bloody stupid idea."

"I don't care—"

"You should," he said sharply, his hands moving swiftly back to his lap. "I…look, I can't go into it now, your friends are coming back, but—"

"So tell me tonight," said Harry quickly, standing up as Draco did. He too could hear the approaching noise of Ron and Hermione. "Not by the lake…meet me…meet me on the seventh floor, I'll find you after everyone's asleep, and you can tell me then!"

"Seventh floor…what are you talking about, there's nothing _on_ the seventh floor, Potter, what—"

"Just trust me," he said over his shoulder, touching Draco's hand briefly before calling out, "Ron! 'Mione! What were you _doing_? I could've written _five _essays in the time you were gone…"

OoOoOo

"Going somewhere?"

Harry froze. There was _no way_ they'd seen him. He fidgeted briefly with his invisibility cloak, but it was entirely secure…he shook his head in annoyance. Whatever the twins were doing in the commonroom at one in the morning, they must be talking to each other…

He shuffled forward a few steps.

"Oho, ignoring us, are we, now?"

This time Harry turned to face them fully, taking a single experimental step toward the portrait hole.

"Bit rude to just leave without say goodbye, isn't it, Fred?"

"_Terrible_ form, George. Simply awful."

Harry remained silent, completely unsure how to handle this.

"Or perhaps we're mistaken and there's no one here at all!"

"Why I do believe you're right! It does seem awfully empty around here…"

"So if we were to, say—"

"—merely by coincidence—"

"—stand in front of the portrait hole for the rest of the night—"

"—surely that would keep no one from there completely innocent nighttime activities?"

"Surely not."

"_All right_!" He whipped off the cloak in one quick, irritated movement. "You know I'm sneaking out, just shut up about it, will you?"

"Temper, temper, Harry dear," scolded George. "Can't you allow us a little polite curiosity?"

"We've tried our more…conventional methods—"

"—unsuccessfully, you might've noticed—"

"—but subtlety is sort of out the window at this point—"

"—so we're just going to follow you."

"No you're not. Look, it is _none of your fucking business _where I'm going, all right?"

"Actually, I think it is, since you're not going anywhere until you tell us."

Both twins darted for the portrait hole at the same moment Harry did.

"Move," he growled, straining quite pointlessly against the two significant larger boys.

"Oh, since you asked so nicely…" said Fred in a sugary voice, taking a step sideways so Harry crashed to the floor. "But you should know I got this out of your backpack three hours ago, so it really won't do you much good."

Harry stared at the shifting lines of ink on the wrinkled parchment Fred was waving in his face.

The little dot labeled "Harry Potter" punched the little dot labeled "Fred Weasley" very, very hard in the stomach before trudging very, very sulkily up the dormitory steps for a very, very long night alone.

OoOoOo

Harry couldn't be sure that Snape had actually seen the furtive looks he'd been shooting Draco every eleven seconds, or the way Draco was treating him like he'd warn his invisibility cloak to class, but it was obvious from the way he immediately paired the two of them up that he thought it would annoy Harry immensely.

"Er," he said a very small voice after a solid forty minutes of hideously uncomfortable silence. "Listen. Last night…"

Draco scratched out a few lines of notes in his small, precise handwriting as though he weren't being talked to.

"Erm. I was…I had to…er…Malfoy?"

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Potter. I get it."

"Oh," said Harry with a sigh of immense relief. "Oh, good. I thought you'd be angry."

"Hand me that scale."

"Fred and George just would _not_ leave me alone and I—are you all right?"

Draco reached across the desk and snatched the scale out of Harry's hands. "Exactly how hard is it to hand someone something, Potter?" he snapped.

"God, what is your _problem_ today?"

Draco turned suddenly to face him with a look like venomous ice. "_Why_ are you still talking to me?"

"Malfoy?" Without thinking he put one hand over Draco's; in what seemed like the same movement the other boy's wand was at his throat.

"Malfoy," Snape said in a bored voice from the front of the room, "though I assure you I have no particular objection to your desire to murder Potter, you will do it _outside_ of this classroom."

Harry gripped the side of the desk so hard his nails left marks in the wood. "D-Draco? What are you _doing_?"

For an instant his expression seemed falter, then hardened so fast Harry thought he'd imagined it. His wand disappeared back into his pocket.

"Malfoy—" he began, but Snape had chosen exactly that moment to dismiss the now frantically murmuring class, and Draco whipped his bag over his shoulder and left without another look at Harry.

And despite every single pair of eyes in the room being trained suspiciously on him, Harry followed.

"Malfoy!" he said sharply, no longer caring who heard him. "Malfoy, I want a word!"

Draco said nothing, plowing on through the post-dismissal crowd as though he couldn't hear.

"Malfoy!"

Two floors, eight hallways, and a lot of intrigued murmuring later, Draco finally whirled around and said in an entirely unfriendly tone, "Is there something you _want_, Potter?

They'd reached a thoroughly deserted corridor; Harry took advantage of the fact, closing the distance between them in an instant, but Draco flinched away when Harry tried to touch his cheek.

"_Stop_ it."

"Look," said Harry, now more than a little annoyed himself, "I said I was sorry. I don't know what you want me to—"

"The only thing I want you to do is _leave me alone_."

"This is insane," Harry muttered, half to himself.

"Honestly, Potter," Draco fumed, "I couldn't care less if you don't want to see me anymore. We were just messing about anyway. But don't you think it's a bit over the fucking top to leave me standing around all night just to get your point across?"

Without putting very much thought into the action, Harry drew his arm back and slammed it forward into Draco's stomach.

_"M-Messing about? _Fred and George wouldn't let me out of the common room, you arsehole. I only tried about eleven times to get past them," he snapped as he aimed again for Draco's stomach, "but if I'd known we were just _messing about_ I wouldn't've bothered."

Not quite understanding how this argument had been so quickly reversed, Draco caught Harry's wrist as it flew forward again. "Stop. _Stop _it, you idiot, I'm trying to think…"

Harry chewed his bottom lip in annoyance, trying to claw his captive hand out of Draco's grasp with his free one. "Let go!"

"Is that true?"

"I can't feel my fingers…"

"Answer me."

"About the twins? Of course it is, what the hell did you _think_ I was doing?"

"I…I thought you were chucking me."

Despite Draco's deadly serious expression, Harry had to bite back a laugh. "Never."

Still holding his wrist, Draco put a hand at the small of Harry's back, nudging the smaller boy toward him so their bodies touched at every possible location. "Oh. Good."

No more than a second passed between those two words and the kiss; Harry whimpered into the other boy's mouth as Draco crushed his body against his own. His free hand twisted in Draco's hair, tightening as the deep, feverish kisses were lowered to his neck.

"So I take it…we're…done arguing?" Harry said breathlessly as Draco's tongue darted out to taste the hollow of his throat.

"Potter…"

Draco pushed back against him with such a light pressure that it took Harry a moment to work out he was trying to push him away.

"What's wrong?"

"We should stop. I don't deserve this, not after I shouted at you like that…"

Harry smiled, unfazed by Draco's solemn expression. "You did pretty get worked up over it, for someone who's only messing about with me."

"You know I didn't mean that."

"Of course you didn't. But you still _said_ it, and since _I'm_ the one that's owed an apology I think _I'll_ decide whether or not I'm still cross about it." He looked thoughtful for a moment, then kissed Draco quickly on the mouth. "No, don't think I am."

Still looking a little hesitant, Draco leaned forward to kiss him again, but Harry put up a hand to stop him. "Er, Malfoy…do you still want to see what's on the seventh floor?"

OoOoOo

"Potter, what the hell _is_ this place?"

Laughing at the mystified look on Draco's face, Harry took a seat in a chair that materialized the moment he realized he wanted one. "I'm not sure, really. But you can't tell anyone it's here, all right?" He tried not to think of the horrible ways in which the rest of the DA would murder him if they ever found out what he was presently using it for.

"And no one can get in?"

"Not while we're in here. And anyway they'd have to know it was here first, and nobody does."

"But how—"

Standing again, Harry silenced him with a kiss. "Look, I didn't exactly bring you here to talk about the bloody architecture, Malfoy."

Before he'd finished speaking, a bed the exact double of his four poster in Gryffindor tower (but nearly half again its size) had appeared in the middle of the room without either of them seeing it do so. Draco raised an eyebrow and Harry flushed brilliantly.

"I…I…was just thinking…sometimes I forget it does that," he stammered stupidly.

Draco smirked evilly. "Might as well get some use out of your filthy imagination, Potter," he said, pushing Harry back on the bed. He had half the buttons on Harry's shirt undone by the time they hit the mattress.

Harry choked back a nervous moan as Draco deftly removed the rest of his clothing without bothering to take off any of his own, his mouth latching hungrily onto Harry's neck. "Draco…wait…"

Draco paused, pulling back a little to stare at Harry. "Sorry. Do you want me to stop?"

"No. But could you…" The flush in his cheeks deepened. "You've seen me like this loads of times, but you always keep your clothes on. Could I maybe…could I see you without them?"

Draco burst out laughing.

"Right. Okay. Thought you wouldn't want to," said Harry in a tiny voice. "Just…er, thought I'd…ask…could you stop laughing, please?"

"No, no, it's got nothing to do with that," Draco said through a barrage of choking laughter. "It's just…you said it like…like you want me to give you a kidney or something, Potter…" The laughing trailed off, and Harry didn't look any less confused. Draco grinned, undoing the buttons of his shirt with a wide grin. "Didn't know you were so interested."

Watching intently as the rest of his clothes joined Harry's on the floor, Harry wondered how anyone could possibly _not_ be interested. He raised a hand wonderingly, hovering indecisively over the bare muscles of Draco's chest before finally grazing lightly over them, barely making contact. He looked like the sort of thing one shouldn't be allowed to touch; it reminded him intensely of the sculptures he'd seen one on a school trip, roped off lest some grubby-handed schoolchild mar their beauty.

"You're staring, Potter," whispered Draco gently, dragging Harry's thoughts back to the present, where the beautiful sculpture was eying him with a kindly sort of impatience. "And I do believe we were in the middle of something interesting..."

Harry swallowed over the nervous lump forming in his throat as Draco stretched out on his back and beckoned Harry closer.

There was an indescribable amount of difference between the way this had felt before and the way if felt now, without the irritating barrier of clothing to separate them. Draco sighed pleasurably as Harry clambered on top of him, his small frame hitching with surprise as something hard dug sharply into his thigh.

"Wh-What's that?"

Draco laughed, sitting up to kiss Harry's neck. "Really, Potter. You're gorgeous, you're naked, you're _sitting_ on me, and you expect me not to get excited?"

"Exci—_oh_. Er. Oh."

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it later."

"Draco…" His voice reached no more than a few inches from his mouth. The words simply refused to be said at a normal volume.

"Hmm?"

"Can…Can I take care of it for you?"

Draco drew in a long breath, likely in preparation for another lengthy, halting explanation, but it was an explanation Harry didn't need and certainly didn't want. Before Draco could speak again he put his hand around the hard length at the meeting of the other boy's thighs in the best imitation he could remember of what Draco had done to him.

Draco's breath caught immediately. "_Potter!_" He made to knock Harry's hands away, but fell back flat on the mattress, breath hissing, as Harry's hand darted in a quick up-down motion.

"Please, just let me do this, Draco. I _want_ to. I know I'm not any good at it—"

"You're managing," said Draco breathlessly.

"—but please, just let me give you something back for _once_, all right?"

"It's really a bit difficult to argue the point when you're _already doing it_, Potter!"

Harry chuckled. "I'll take that as permission."

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, unable to manage anything that wasn't a moan in his current state. It was a strange feeling, to suddenly be in the position of power, to have Draco writhing at _his_ touch, to make this strong, beautiful boy pant and groan and shout his name…

Curious, he dipped his head down, flicking his tongue experimentally against the very tip of rock-hard mass in his hands. Draco shuddered.

"Merlin, Potter, don't_ do_ that…"

Pleased with this reaction, he shifted on the bed to get a better angle and licked slowly up Draco's entire length, massaging it gently, his fingers still wrapped in a tight circle around the base.

Draco's fingers knotted desperately in the sheets, his spine arching at an angle that couldn't possibly be comfortable, and Harry blinked in surprise as a hot, vaguely sweet liquid shot suddenly down his throat. He stared at Draco's shuddering form, swallowing thickly. "Are you all right?"

Draco glared at him through half open eyes, his chest still heaving. "Did you just _swallow_ that?"

"Er…yes?" said Harry confusedly. Should he have spit it out?

"Come here."

A little apprehensively, Harry slid across the bed to lie on his side next to Draco, facing nervously away from him.

"You are a terrible listener," he purred into Harry's ear, his hand gliding across Harry's ribs, down his stomach, taking a loose hold of the swollen member aching unpleasantly for his touch. "Didn't I say—" Harry threw his head back against Draco's shoulder, his eyes screwed shut, his breathing frantic, "—not to do that?" The gentleness had evaporated from his touch; the sliding movements of his hand had become quick and forceful, his thumb massaging firmly at the tip. Harry's hips jerked backwards, brushing his backside up against the clear evidence of Draco's own arousal. He bit delicately at Harry's ear, his unoccupied hand slipping under the frenzied form twisting helplessly in his arms to grasp at Harry's chest, holding him still.

"Ah! Draco…"

Harry groaned, his body curving against Draco's, his breathing ragged and erratic…

…and Draco pulled suddenly away.

"Nnngh—what--what're you doing?! Let me finish…"

His fingers barely grazed against him now, keeping him directly on the brink of climax.

"Promise you won't ever do that again."

Harry drove his hips up against Draco's hand with a wail of frustration. "Don't…you can't just _stop_ like that…_please_…"

"Promise me you won't do that unless I ask you to," commanded Draco flatly.

"Yeah! All right! I promise! Just—!" He bit down hard on his bottom lip, lasting no more than a second once Draco resumed. Draco's arms closed around him, almost apologetically, his chin resting on the smaller boy's shoulder.

"Sorry. But I need you not to do that again. I didn't know how else to make you promise."

"There are worse ways," said Harry, his breathing still heavy. He sighed. "You don't ever want to have sex with me, do you?"

"Don't be stupid." Harry opened his mouth, but Draco put his own index finger over it and continued, "I'm a teenage boy, Potter, there are only about eight brain cells in my head that _aren't_ entirely, constantly devoted to how badly I want to shag you…" He sat up, shaking his head. "I just think I'm…distracting you with all this. You don't know how you really feel about me because we're so busy with _this_ I'm barely giving you time to think. "

"I don't have anything to think _about_. I _love_—"

"Don't say that," Draco ordered with a pained expression. "That just makes this worse…"

A horrible, impending doom sort of feeling clawed its way into Harry's stomach. "It makes…it makes _what_ worse?"

"I don't think we should see each other until after Christmas break," said Draco without looking at him.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Sweet Jesus on a sesame seed bun, that was the longest chapter in the history of foreverty…_

_But come on, it's five and a half thousand words long and it's filled with PORN._

_You guys _can't_ still be mad at me for not updating, right?_

_Right?_

_P.S._

_Oh, nearly forgot, some notes on (my complete rape of) the timeline: this story started sometime around early November, and they're now up to around mid-December (yes, they are fooling around outdoors in England in the middle of December. Obviously they have some unmentioned wizardly way of not getting hypothermia. Personally I think it's because the passionate flames of tasty man-love keep you warm in any weather.) AND THEY STILL HAVE NOT HAD SEX._

_I'm really losing my credibility as a fangirl here…_

_P.P.S._

_Please excuse my awkward blowjob scenes. This is the first time I've ever written about one and as you can probably tell I don't know anything about them you can't learn from porn. Try to ignore them if possible, as they make me feel sort of shifty about myself as a person.) _


	9. Alone Apart

**Disclaimer: **This is the place where something clever goes.

_(a/n: And so it seems I have celebrated my triumphant return to updates by…well, by not updating for another three weeks. Oops._

_Aaaanyway, as you'll notice when I finally shut up and let you get on with reading the chapter, I did a big ole timeskip and the boys are now on Christmas break. Why? Well, I didn't feel like writing a whole chapter of Harry going "ANGST ANGST ANGST WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME ANGSTY ANGST ANGST!" and Draco going "I TOO AM ANGSTING COPIOUSLY AND I THINK K-SAN IS JUST TRYING TO SEE HOW LONG SHE CAN GO WITHOUT TELLING YOU WHY!" and I can't imagine that you would want to read one._

_So now only half the chapter is like that. Enjoy!_

_P.S._

_DEDICATION! TO __**Pledodge**__!! FOR WRITING ME THE SCARIEST REVIEW EVER AND GETTING ME BACK ON TRACK WITH WRITING THIS! I AM SO TERRIFIED I SPEAK ONLY IN CAPITAL LETTERS!)_

* * *

Chapter 9: Alone Apart

_We're sailing, we're sailing every night_

_We're drifting, drifting alone apart_

_Not to show that we're in need_

_But I'd heal your wounds if you bleed…_

—_The Swell Season_

* * *

"Harry, you can't just stay up here the whole vacation."

Ignoring the almost pleading tone of Hermione's voice, Harry pulled the blankets back up over his head with a scowl. He was pretty sure he could.

"G'way, 'Mione. 'M sleepin'…" he growled groggily, closing his eyes in an attempt to launch himself back into the marginally preferable dream he'd been having.

"It's four in the afternoon!"

"…and?"

"And you can't just_ sleep_ all day, it's _worrying_ people…"

Harry put a pillow over his face and groaned loudly. "Hermione. I. Don't. Care. All right? Just _fuck off_, you and everyone else who keeps coming up here to bother me, because I don't want to talk to _any of you_!"

There was a long silence, and Hermione said, in a quiet voice further muffled by the door between them, "This is about Malfoy, isn't it?"

Harry bolted out of bed and flung the door open, dragging Hermione inside by one arm before slamming it closed again. "What did you just say?"

Hermione rubbed uncomfortably at her forearm, which was faintly red where Harry had grabbed it. "It_ is_ Malfoy, isn't it?" she gushed with the air of someone who'd been working up the nerve to ask for quite some time. "I know you've never said who, but you're always looking at him and you two never argue like you used to and I could've _sworn_ I heard you call him Draco that time he attacked you in Potions and you never _did_ say why you followed him after and—"

"Shut up, shut up, shut _up_," Harry commanded, his eyes squeezed shut in annoyance, holding a hand up for silence. "Stop bloody talking for a minute…" He opened the door slightly, scanning the area for eavesdroppers. Satisfied, he closed it again, giving Hermione a dark look. "Did you tell anyone else?"

"Of course not. But everyone's getting really worried, Harry. You can't just—"

"Obviously I can," said Harry moodily.

Hermione planted her hands on her hips, glowering at him. "Have you _seen_ Sirius lately? He looks half dead and he doesn't eat and he doesn't even _talk_ to anyone aside from Remus because he's so busy worrying about _you_."

A slight pang of guilt tugged in Harry's chest. "Well…I'm sure he's…er…"

"Honestly, what did you expect? He's been dying to see you for ages and you come home like _this_—" she gestured disgustedly at Harry's gaunt, disheveled appearance.

"It's not that bad…" said Harry defensively, absently smoothing his hair out with one hand. "I mean, I've sort of gotten a bit scruffy, but—"

"_Scruffy_?" repeated Hermione indignantly. "Really, have you even looked at yourself?

"Well, I...no," he muttered as Hermione steered him toward the nearest mirror.

"_Look._"

His first thought was that there was something disturbing living in that mirror. Bleary-eyed, it peered unhappily back at him, pale face framed by a greasy, tangled mess of jet black hair only recognizable as such by the fact that it was attached to the top of its head. Dark shadows hung heavily under its eyes, which seemed dull and uninterested save for the slightly confused way the brow above them furrowed as the…_thing_…stared back at him.

"I…I'm going to take a shower, Hermione," said Harry.

OoOoOo

Harry breathed in a thick cloud of steam and sighed deeply.

_"Look, I don't mean forever…"_

He leaned sullenly against the shower wall, Draco's voice echoing loudly in his head.

_"…we just need to get away from each for a bit…"_

He turned the tap with a sharp, aggressive twist, until it was much hotter than should ever be necessary, hoping the scalding water might distract him.

_"…sort out how we really feel…"_

It didn't.

_"…before we do anything stupid."_

_Well_, he mused sourly, jerking the tap to ice cold with a similar lack of result, _I certainly feel stupid _now.

_I just _had_ to say I loved him, didn't I?_

He braced one hand against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose so hard his nails left marks. Biting down hard on his tongue, he swallowed miserably over the lump rising in his throat. He was _not_ going to cry.

"Harry?" said someone through the bathroom door in the tentative sort of tone more commonly used for talking people down off ledges. "You all right, mate?"

"Fine, Ron."

"Oh. Er. Okay."

Harry only made it halfway through his next tragic sigh before:

"It's just, er, you've sort of been in there for an hour already…"

Harry sucked in a long, irritated breath and shouted over the noise of the shower, "So?"

"Well…you're not…I dunno…_drowning_ yourself or anything?"

Harry shut off the water, certain he'd misheard. "_What?_"

The voice on the other side of the door turned suddenly sheepish. "Sorry. Just. Well. You've been a bit…er…_off_ lately…"

Securing a large bath towel around his waist, he stepped out of the shower with a scowl, shaking his head. "_No_, Ron, I am not trying to _drown_ myself. I…fell asleep."

"In the shower?"

Harry flung open the door, glaring hard enough to make up for his near-nudity. "Why don't you mind your own bloody business, Ron?" he growled as he shoved past his friend.

Leaving a very offended redhead in his wake, Harry stormed off for his room, slamming the door behind him with about five times the necessary force.

God_damn_ Draco for doing this to him. It wasn't the sort of thing one person should even be _allowed_ to do to another; just over a fortnight without Draco's company and he was so miserable his friends thought he was going to kill himself.

He dressed quickly in the first clothes he laid eyes on, taking little interest in the activity, before shuffling mutely back out into the hall.

"Harry—" Ron began as he passed the bathroom again. Harry prepared to ignore him further, then thought better of it, fixing an emotionless smile to his face and turning to face his friend.

"Hey, Ron."

Ron blinked, clearly not having expected an actual response. "Er…hi."

"Listen, sorry about…that. Like you said, I've been a bit off lately, you know?"

"…right…"

"So…er…don't worry about it?"

"Hm." He folded his arms, thoroughly unconvinced. Harry's smile flickered very slightly.

"Er…haven't seen Sirius around, have you?" said Harry quickly.

"Downstairs. Meeting's bound to be over by now, though. Look, Harry—"

"Thanks!" He was down the stairs in about half a second, but hovered uncertainly on the landing, suddenly doubting his plans.

Sirius might not approve of this at all.

The thought had honestly not occurred to him until just then, but that was entirely possible, wasn't it? Even if he left out the whole Malfoy bit (as he had every intention of doing), there was every chance Sirius would find such behavior as disgusting as the Dursleys did. His mind provided him instantly with elaborately detailed images of a Sirius entirely horrified by his godson's secret, too repulsed even to look at him…

A hand caught his shoulder just as he turned again for the stairs. "Harry."

_Merlin, Hermione wasn't joking, _thought Harry in alarm. His godfather really did look like hell, his normally handsome features dull and withdrawn and his hair set in an unkempt tangle above brows drawn tightly together in a worried furrow.

"Sirius. Er. Hello."

"You're…not going back upstairs, are you? Already?"

"Er…" The excuse he'd been hurriedly putting together in his head promptly disassembled itself, no match for the tragic look his godfather was giving him. "…no? No. Just…admiring the stairs. Lovely floors you've got here. Very…carpeted."

Sirius ran a hand absently through his hair, his mouth tightening into an anxious frown. "You've eaten, haven't you? Molly can make you something, she won't mind, she's always trying to feed you anyway—"

"I'm fine," said Harry. It was obvious from the sunken pallor currently warping Sirius's features that Harry was hardly the malnourished one in this conversation. "Hermione brought me something earlier."

"Oh. Right." He drummed his fingers nervously against his thigh. "Right."

Harry shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Sirius?"

"Yeah?" Harry's heart tightened guiltily at the desperate worry in the man's tone.

"I…er…can I sort of…er…talk to you about something? Privately?"

Sirius's eyes widened with concern for roughly a millisecond before he managed to force some composure back onto his face. "Sure. Yeah. Er…I'll just…er…bedroom…" he said vaguely, herding Harry off in the direction of his own bedroom. "Had it soundproofed ages ago," he clarified at Harry's questioning look. "Couldn't hear a _banshee_ through the silencing in charms I've got up."

"Why would you need—" Harry started, but Sirius closed the door loudly just as he began speaking and then fiddled noisily with the doorknob until he stopped trying to finish the sentence.

"So." Sirius cleared his throat, studying a lamp to Harry's right with enormous interest. "Er. Chairs. Sit. You should be sitting for this…" he mumbled half to himself as he dragged a chair of fantastically outdated design across the room to where Harry was standing.

"Sitting for _what_? Sirius, what are you talking about?"

"We were _going_ to tell you!" Sirius wailed suddenly. "I mean really, we _were_, but Remus didn't think you were old enough and I was just afraid—well, I don't imagine those muggles would've brought you up to be especially open-minded about it—oh, I should've _known_ you'd work it out on your own, you must be so angry—"

"_Sirius!_" Harry held up his hands and Sirius quieted, perching nervously on the edge of his bed. "You know I've got absolutely no idea what you're talking about, right?"

Sirius stared at him. "You…that's not what you wanted to…"

Harry's next words were cut off by the loud creak of the bedroom door opening. "Sirius," said Remus distractedly, "did I leave my tie in here last ni—oh!" He froze on the threshold, his cheeks turning a faint pink. "D-Didn't see you there! I—er—I was just—leaving! Yes! Walked in here completely by accident! On my way to the…the…closet! And this…er…_isn't_ the closet, so I'll just be going now! Goodbye!"

Sirius's face turned the same delicate shade of red as his friend's as Remus hurriedly shut the door again. Harry frowned slightly. "Closet?"

"Ha…yeah…he's…forgetful, isn't he?"

"Oh yes," said Harry, picking up a small, wrinkled object from under the bed and holding it up for Sirius to see. "Leaving his tie in here and everything."

Sirius's blush deepened. "Er…"

"Oh _god_. You are, aren't you? You…you and Remus, you're—"

"Yes," said Sirius very, very quietly. "Yes, we are." His shoulders slumped miserably. "I'm sorry, Harry, but—"

"_Sorry?_" Harry exclaimed, awash with relief. "Why are you sorry? Don't be sorry! This—this is perfect!"

Sirius's face was an equal mixture of joy and confusion. "Well, I knew you liked Remus, but I wasn't expecting—"

"No, no, you don't understand! This makes everything so much easier!"

Sirius laughed. "Well, easier for me and Remus, anyway. He can stop sneaking out of my room at four in the morning."

"No," said Harry again, "I mean for me. I can just _tell_ you now."

"Tell me?" The smile faded slightly. "Tell me what?"

"I…I'm like you. Like you are with Remus. There's a boy at school and…" He swallowed thickly. "I…I don't think I like girls, Sirius."

Sirius eyed him silently for a long moment. "You're joking."

Harry shook his head mutely.

"_Git!_" Sirius growled, cuffing him affectionately on the ear. "That's what you've been up there angsting about all this time? I've been worried sick!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know you'd be okay with it?"

"We're family, Harry," said Sirius firmly. "We don't keep secrets."

"Oh, and Remus was in here looking for the closet last night, was he?" Harry sneered.

Sirius waved a finger at him. "That is not a tale for the ears of children, young man."

Harry pulled an expression of mock-disgust. "I'll take your word for it."

Just then a knock sounded loudly at the door, interrupting whatever Sirius might've said next. "Er…Harry? Are you in there?"

Harry jumped out of his seat, glad to escape the conversation before the subject of exactly which boy had caught his interest could be brought up. "Yeah! Oh. Ron. Hi."

"Letter for you," said Ron with a frown. "Dunno who it's from, though, can't find an address on—"

"Thanks!" said Harry quickly, snatching the envelope away from his friend and charging up the stairs, running full blast until he reached his bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him.

His hands shook slightly as he fingered the edges of the envelope, which, as Ron had said, was unmarked except for the small, precise handwriting in which the sender had written Harry's name.

Of course, when you watch someone take down Potions notes every single day for three weeks, their handwriting is enough.

What, he wondered silently as he opened the letter, could Draco Malfoy possibly want with him now?

* * *

_(a further a/n: You know, maybe I should've just called this "The Chapter That Resolves Nothing", or "The Chapter That is Made Entirely of Uncomfortable Pauses in Conversation", or "My, That's Quite a Number of Fucking Ellipses You've Got There."_

_Or perhaps "The Chapter That Will Get Me Killed By Everyone"._

_Now if you'll excuse me, I think the Common Decency Police are here to take my cliffhanger license away.)_


	10. Drown Out

**Disclaimer: **It's J.K.'s sandbox. I'm just building a castle in it. And it looks just like the one in The Little Mermaid where all the towers are secretly shaped like penises.

_(a/n: Oh, you're still here? Wowzers. Well, I could tell you a long boring story about how annoying it is to have an actual JOB that I have to LEAVE MY HOUSE FOR (and you all know how I hate that) and about how they make me do WORK there so I don't have the wonderful free yaoi-producing time that I once did, but you know what?_

_-flings update-_

_There. That is for you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go nap the scent of employment off my body.)_

* * *

Chapter 10: Drown Out

_Drown out_

_The voice that breaks the silence_

_And talks the joy out of everything_

_You were found out_

_And had to walk in darkness_

_Without the only thing you cared about…_

—_The Swell Season_

* * *

Presently, the only thing Draco Malfoy wanted was to punch his father very hard in the mouth.

He toyed idly with his fork, poking with no interest whatsoever at his dinner (some bird he'd never heard of which was undoubtedly as expensive as it was inedible) and allowing the conversation to wash over him like a particularly annoying wave.

"Smile, darling," said his mother in a whisper, nudging him under the surface of the table as she drained her third (or was it her fourth?) glass of wine.

"If I'd known we were having guests," returned Draco in an equally quiet voice, "I'd've stayed in my room."

Narcissa snorted into her wineglass, quickly disguising it as a cough. "Miss Parkinson—" she said brightly, turning to the girl seated across from her son.

"Oh no, Mrs. Malfoy," she interrupted, flashing an astonishingly fake smile, "you _must_ call me Pansy!"

"_Pansy_," Narcissa corrected herself, motioning absently for her drink to be refilled. The woman was hell on the wine cellars. "Of course. Now, Draco tells me you're in his year at school. A prefect, aren't you?"

Draco had of course told her no such thing; he hadn't so much as mentioned the girl in passing since second year and whatever small talk his mother managed to drag the conversation along with were topics spoon-fed to her by her husband about ten minutes before the Parkinsons and that insufferably clingy spawn of theirs had turned up to spoil his appetite.

As if sensing the thought his father gave him a quick, sharp look of warning that went unnoticed by their guests, lost completely between the huge fake smile that preceded it and the huge fake smile that followed it. "Of course. Our son has inherited my impeccable taste in friends."

This roused a laugh from the adults which was fortunately loud enough to cover Draco's ensuing derisive snort. _Friends?_ Unless he'd also inherited his father's absurd definition of the term (Friend (_noun_): one whose lips are planted firmly and permanently on your lily-white arse in an emotionally vacant bond formed entirely of repressed hatred (see "lackey")), he'd never had a _friend_ in his life. Which, considering his options in that area, suited him just fine.

Pansy flashed him another smile and he inclined his head further in the direction of his nearly full plate, pretending not to notice. This…this was just a new low. He'd long ago resigned to the fact that his father was a man of unthinkable stupidity determined to meddle constantly in his life until the day he died, but this was such a new and frightening level of idiocy he could hardly even get his head around it.

They actually expected him to _date_ this girl.

"If you've finished eating, Draco," said his father in a voice which informed him that he most certainly _was_, "your mother and I will be taking our guests into the sitting room for an after dinner drink."

Draco made a mental note to start brewing his mother's hangover potion.

"Why don't you show…ah…your _darling_ little friend around the manor, dear?"

Pansy smiled so hard Draco thought he heard her teeth creak. "That would be _lovely_, Mrs. Malfoy."

OoOoOo

"This is your bedroom, is it?"

Draco ground his molars irritably. "Yes. And I'd rather you didn't—is that _firewhiskey?_"

Pansy smirked a little, taking a swig from the bottle. "No, it's tea, but why don't you shout a bit louder in case our parents didn't hear you the first time. Want some?"

"_No_! Put that away! Why've you got it in the first place?"

Pansy eyed him exasperatedly, darting behind him to close the door. "I find my parents that much easier to deal with if I've had a little…help. Sure you don't want anyway?"

Draco blinked. This behavior did not match up with the insipid girl he'd been showing around the house for the last twenty minutes, and he wasn't sure he liked her any better like this. "Do your parents know you've got this?" said Draco, mouth denting into a slight frown.

"Do _your_ parents know you're gay?"

Draco's pretense of composure melted instantly. "_Excuse me?_"

Pansy fingered the rim of her bottle with a tiny laugh. "Ooh. Comfortable in that closet, is it?"

"What," snarled Draco, snatching the bottle out of her hands, "is that meant to mean?"

"It's this charming phrase used to describe those who insist on denying their raging homosexuality. Sure you've never heard it?"

"I _know_ what it means! But it's got nothing to do with me, so—"

"You don't have to lie to your own, Draco," said Pansy in a low voice.

"What?"

Pansy quirked an eyebrow at him. "Obviously I'm better at hiding it than you are. You still haven't worked out I'm a lesbian?"

"You—you're—you're a _what_?"

"Merlin, and you're supposed to be smart…Lesbians. I trust you've heard of them? Les-bi-an. As in I like women. As in I have about as much interest in penis as my dad does."

"But—you never leave me alone at school! You fancy me!"

"I _pretend_ to. None of the other blokes will bother me when everyone knows I've got a massive thing for you, and _you_ won't bother me because you're gayer than a muggle magician."

"I—" Draco protested feebly.

"Yes you are. And obviously I can't have my parents knowing or they might…well actually I can't think of anything they could do that's stupider than this, come to think of it…"

Draco frowned at her for a long time. "I've changed my mind about that drink," he said, taking a delicate sip from the bottle as he sat down on his bed.

OoOoOo

"Hey," said Pansy from the floor some twenty minutes later, rolling onto her stomach to blink dazedly at Draco. "What're we gonna do about this thing, anyway?"

"Thing," said Draco distantly. "Thing. What thing?"

"Parents. Setting us up. What do we…do?"

Draco stared impassively at the ceiling. "Dunno."

"D'you wanna just…do it?"

"Eh?"

"...y'know...date. Keep our parents from finding out we're…like…faggotty things."

"I'm a faggot," corrected Draco, passing her the nearly empty bottle. "You're a dyke."

"'S goddamn right I am. I like _women_…"

Draco snickered. "You're drunk."

"Your _face_ is drunk. C'mon, think about it…you'd never pester me for sex…an' I don care how many blokes you see…an' our parents would leave us aloooone…heh…let's jus' do it."

"All valid points," said Draco evenly.

"So—"

"I can't," said the firewhiskey in his stomach. "I'm in love with Harry fucking Potter."

In any kind of just universe, anyone who laughed the lengthy and deafening hurricane of laughter that Pansy proceeded to laugh would've suffocated within at least ten minutes of starting.

Apparently he did not live in a just universe.

"_Knew_ it."

"Liar. _I_ didn't know it! How can _you_ know it?"

"You're just too…obsessed with him, y'know. Nobody talks about people they hate that often unless they secretly want to shag their brains out or something."

This time Draco laughed as well. "Don't…don't tell anyone I said…that…ha…I haven't even told _him_…"

"Stupid. Gotta _tell_ people, when you feel like that…just hurts everyone, otherwise…"

"Oh yeah? Going to tell Granger anytime soon?"

Pansy cackled. "_Granger_? Ugh. Best of luck to Weasley with that one. All right to look at but you couldn't pay me to put up with that mouthy little—"

Someone knocked loudly at the door and she flung the bottle under Draco's bed.

"Draco? Is…oh, what _is_ her name…is your little friend in there with you? Her parents are asking for her…"

_You're still drunk!_ Draco mouthed at her.

"Don't worry," Pansy whispered back. "They're stupid. See you at school."

She hoisted herself off the floor on only her second try, before walking to the door in a perfect line of practiced straightness. "Oh, hello, Mrs. Malfoy! _Do_ excuse me, I'm _awfully _tired…"

OoOoOo

_Brain._

_On fire._

That was Draco's immediate thought, or at least the nearest thing to a thought he was capable of forming with the roaring, screaming, ungodly hellspawn of a headache brutalizing his skull.

_…Bottle?_ he thought as one rolled out from under his bed.

Oh.

_That's_ what he'd been doing last night.

Getting unthinkably drunk with Pansy Parkinson.

Right.

She wasn't all that bad, really, he thought, staggering across the room for the door but only making it as far as his desk before he had to sit down again. Almost like a friend, he supposed, after all that talking…

Talking…

...about…

…talking about…

Oh. Oh dear _god_.

He'd told her about Potter.

_Potter…_

His chest throbbed suddenly with a pain far worse than any hangover, and he berated himself silently for allowing the thought.

_Don't._

_Think about._

_Him._

Funny how a mind that had mere moments earlier been wallowing so deeply in a vat of evil headache soup it couldn't manage full sentences found itself mysteriously capable of instantly flooding with immaculately detailed reproductions of every moment he'd ever spent within eighty yards of Harry Potter.

_"I don't understand." He looks down, long lashes half-covering those wide, beautiful emerald eyes. "You don't want to see me anymore?"_

_"That's not what I mean."_

_He doesn't look comforted. "I…but I don't need time away from you! We don't see enough of each other as it is!"_

_"I'm not just getting this out of nowhere, Potter. I've had a lot of time to think it over."_

_He just stares. Crosses his legs. Looks away. "…but I'm in love with you."_

_And I don't._

_Say._

_Anything._

He put his head down on the desk, groaning loudly. "Bugger," he mumbled quietly into the cold surface. "_Bugger_," he repeated loudly enough to irritate his hangover. "Oh fuckbuggeringwanker_shit,_ what is _wrong_ with me?" His head pulsed angrily in protest of the noise and he ignored it, groping randomly in his desk drawer for the nearest quill.

_I am an idiot._

_I am an idiot and he doesn't deserve this._

"_Dear Potter_," he scrawled across the fist piece of parchment he found…

OoOoOo

"_I love you. _

_That's probably a daft way to begin a letter, particularly a letter you might not even get in the first place because I haven't got a bloody clue where to send it, but then I seem to be doing a lot of daft things lately so I suppose it doesn't matter much. Which segues rather nicely into my second point: _

_I have been a fucking idiot._

_I don't expect you to forget that. Or forgive me. I won't blame you even if you crumpled this up and chucked it out a window the minute you saw my handwriting. I've already blown more chances than you should've given me to begin with and if you've somehow managed to wise up while I was busy being an arse I can hardly hold it against you._

_But I hope you haven't. I hope you're still naïve and soft-hearted and wonderfully stupid enough to forgive me. And when you have, if you ever do, meet me at that place you showed me so I can take back every stupid word I said there. I'll wait. Every night. Even if you never come. Even if it takes forever. You mean more to me than all the time in the world._

_Love,_

_Draco"_

Harry smoothed the edges of the parchment, which had begun to wrinkle slightly from the fifteen or so readings he'd given it in the twenty minutes since its arrival.

"I love you too, Draco," he said quietly, clutching the letter to his chest with a smile.

* * *

_(a further a/n: NO I DID _NOT_ WRITE THE MAJORITY OF THIS CHAPTER BETWEEN 2:17 AND 4:39 A.M. AFTER DRINKING A LITER OF MALIBU RUM! WHY WOULD YOU EVER SUGGEST SUCH A THING?!_

_(shifty eyes)_

_IGNORE THOSE PARENTHESIS! THEY KNOW NOTHING!_

_And hey, at least it's not a cliffhanger.)_


	11. Finally

**Disclaimer: **Pshaw. Disclaimers are for people who haven't stayed up all night writing you thirty-five hundred words of porn.

_(a/n: Hey, it only took me like a week and a half to update this time! (Let's not talk about how sad it is that I now consider that an accomplishment…) Yeah, so remember that time-consuming job I spoke of? Well, I sort of got fired from it. Which would mean faster updates if I wasn't so busy wallowing miserably on my sofa watching Hannah Montana reruns in my bathrobe and eating Easy Mac…_

_Anyway, if that subtle little disclaimer, the most fitting chapter title ever, and the crazed jig of fangirlosity I am presently dancing around a rather dismayed Paranoid Android weren't enough to clue you in, THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER IS SMUT._

_Which means that I don't have to say anything clever because you've already stopped reading my silly little a/n in favor of the sweaty man-relations going on below it, haven't you? Well, really! What if I was going to say something VERY VERY IMPORTANT that you have now missed totally because you couldn't take five measly little seconds to finish the a/n that I have slaved away on? BUT YOU JUST WOULDN'T LISTEN, WOULD YOU?_

_Which is all right, really, because I've got nothing to say. Enjoy your smut.)_

* * *

Chapter 11: Finally

_When you want something so much_

_It's drawing trouble on your life_

_And when you've found something so good_

_It's hard to focus on what's right_

_-- The Frames_

* * *

Draco was experiencing some difficulty in getting Harry's tongue out of his mouth long enough to say hello.

"You came," he said into Harry's shoulder, hugging the smaller boy tightly as the kiss broke.

"I'd be mad not to. God, I've never missed anyone so much in my life…" He nuzzled contentedly against Draco's neck, breathing in the familiar scent of his skin with a tiny sigh.

"I thought you'd be angry."

"I _was_. Still am, a bit. That's why I didn't write you back. Thought you should have to…I dunno…stew in it, like I did."

Draco laughed. "It worked. Easily the worst holiday I've ever had."

"Sorry," said Harry seriously. "I shouldn't've—but I was just so—and you—"

"Stop talking," Draco said, kissing him in such a way that Harry couldn't remember what he'd been trying to say in the first place. "You're not making sense anyway."

"You don't…" mumbled Harry, his breath catching slightly as Draco nipped gently at his neck, "…want to…er…talk…about…"

A bed popped quietly into existence a few feet to their left.

"…apparently not."

Hands pressed firmly at his shoulders, directing him toward the bed, but retreated instantly as Draco's eyes met his own. "Unless you don't want to?" he said levelly.

Harry wrapped his arms around Draco's neck, crushing his mouth against the other boy's and falling back on the mattress. "You _know_ what I want."

Draco grinned, chuckling minutely and closing fingers around the part of Harry already straining for his touch. "Well, I think _this_ gives me a general idea."

"Nngh…hang on…I've still got half my clothes on…"

"Not the important half."

"Ah! Draco! Wait, wai—"

"Oh, just be quiet for once. I'm not going to stop and you know it."

Harry lifted one hand, covering his eyes with it, and bit down hard on the shirtsleeve still clinging to the other, saying nothing.

"I missed you, you know that?" Draco breathed, pulling aside the collar of his shirt to plant a light kiss on his neck. "I couldn't even let myself _think _about you, I missed you so much."

Harry tried for something like, "Well, it was your bright idea to begin with, arsehole," and managed only a desperate groan as Draco's hand tightened around him.

"I didn't think it would be like that."

"Mm…D-Draco…I…ah…is this really the…ah! Th-The right time f-for—?"

Draco's eyes locked on his as Harry squirmed against him. "Well, I've got your attention, haven't I?"

Some heavy and very embarrassing panting was about as close to words as he could manage at this point.

"Anyway, it was awf—ah, already? Honestly, Potter, you've really got to work on your endurance," he chided, licking obscenely at his fingertips while Harry turned several impressive shades of scarlet at once.

"Shut up! I-It's been a while and I wasn't ready!" Harry growled, rolling over to bury his face in the pillows.

"You were a little _too_ ready, if you ask me."

"Yeah, well, I'm _not_ asking you," he mumbled into the pillow. "Wanker."

Draco leaned over him, kissing the back of the neck with a small grin. "Oh, come on. I'm only teasing."

"And that makes you less of a wanker, does it?"

He caught Harry's shoulder in a gentle but firm grip and flipped him over onto his back with one hand. "I love you."

Harry flushed slightly. "That's not a—a get out of jail free card, you know!"

"It's what?"

"A get out of—you know, like in Monopoly?"

Draco blinked at him. "What?"

"_Monopoly_. You've never played—of course you haven't. It's this muggle board game that gets really annoying after about two hours and in it there are these cards and if you have one then you can get out of prison without paying."

"Are all muggle board games about prison?"

"It's not _about_ prison, it—look, you're sort of missing the point here, Draco."

"You have a point?"

"I _mean_ you can't just tell me you love me every time you do something stupid and expect me to—"

Draco kissed him hard on the mouth, almost aggressively. "Yes I can, because now _you're_ a wanker for not saying it back."

Harry made to push him away and Draco caught both of his hands in one of his own and held them against the headboard. "Well, I'm not going to say it _now_," snapped Harry stubbornly.

"This is very damaging to my ego, Potter."

"Good. Needs to be deflated anyway."

"Say it."

"No!"

"Say it or I'm going to tickle you."

"What are you, eleven? No!"

Draco pouted attractively at him. "Hmm. So you want a more _adult_ method of persuasion, then?"

"Wha—Draco, no! Really, don't, I'm not ready yet, we just—mm!"

The protest was abruptly cut off by Draco kissing him forcefully on the mouth.

"Shh. There are only three words I want to hear from you right now, Potter."

"Stop it, arsehole!"

"Not those ones, I'm afraid," said Draco, forcing Harry back against the mattress with one hand flat against his stomach. "Try again."

"I mean it!"

"Oh, you're not very good at this…" he purred, sliding down Harry's body and licking delicately at the meeting of his thighs. Harry shuddered.

"You're…such…a…"

"Really, you're not even trying now…"

Harry's head snapped back, his spine arching, and Draco's fingers locked in a tight circle around Harry's base, freezing his climax before it could even begin.

"Now, _what_ do you want to say to me, Potter?"

"…I…"

"Yes?"

"…I…"

"Potter, I'm getting impatient…" said Draco coolly, swirling his tongue absently around the head and pushing Harry even further over the edge.

"…I…love you, all right? God, I _love_ you, you stupid, evil _bastard_, and I am going to _kill_—nngh!"

"There," said Draco with a sweetness that made Harry want to hit him right in his unnecessarily handsome face, one arm snaking around Harry's still heaving chest to hug him tightly. "Didn't kill you, did it?"

"The only person getting killed around here is going to be _you_, Malfoy," growled Harry in annoyance. "Learn a little bloody self-control, will you?

"No," said Draco seriously, kissing Harry's shoulder. "I probably won't."

"You're an arse," Harry said flatly. "But I _do_ love you."

Draco grinned, but tensed slightly as small, deft fingers pressed against his thigh. "What are you doing?"

"Your turn," said Harry simply. "You can't just do all you want to me and expect me not to have a go at—"

Draco caught his wrist exactly like he had the last five or so times Harry had tried this. "Potter, how many_ fucking_ times do I have to tell you? We. Are. Not. Doing. _That_."

Harry slid as far away from Draco as the bed would allow, hugging his knees and scowling. "So. It's still like that, then?" he asked in a voice quiet with utter misery.

"Don't give me that look," said Draco in a far gentler (and slightly guilty) tone, "I can't stand it when you look at me like that."

"It's supposed to be different now!" said Harry in exasperation. "You said you loved me!"

"And I_ meant_ it, but Potter, you don't understand—"

"No, Draco, I don't understand at all! If you love me so bloody much then _why won't you have sex with me?!"_

"You…" Draco turned his head sideways, ice-blonde hair obscuring his face as a dark expression crossed it. "…really want to know?

"No, I'm just asking to make light conversation. _Yes I want to know_!"

Draco sighed, and was silent for a long moment. "…you've got the right, I suppose," he said finally in a tone which made Harry wonder whether he had any right at all. "Well. I was thirteen when I first worked out I didn't have much interest in girls. Somehow I got it into my head that my parents would be happy about it. Or at least glad they had a son who trusted them enough to tell them who he was, that sort of…of _stupid_ thing…" He laughed humorlessly. "Oh, bright idea that was. 'Don't be ridiculous'. That's what Father said. And Mother just sat next to him. Drinking. And staring at me."

Harry uncurled from his ball to lie next to Draco, head resting on his bare chest. "They didn't believe you?"

"I don't know. Mother probably wasn't even paying attention. And Father…" Draco sighed. "He's not a bad person. He's just…dense. He kept telling me that I _wasn't_, that I was his _son_, to stop being _stupid_...most of it didn't make much sense." His eyes stayed trained on the ceiling. "Eventually I just sort of…took off. Not the best idea, I'll admit, but I was so _angry_…"

Harry was very quickly finding he did not like the way this story was going one infinitesimal bit. "…why was it a bad idea?" he asked, hoping very hard that the answer had something to do with his parents grounding him for breaking curfew.

"I'm getting to that. Anyway, I just sort of wandered outside for a bit. Got lost—Yes, Potter I got lost on my own property. We've got a lot of fucking money, all right?—and ended up…well, I don't know where exactly. In the woods somewhere. And there were these muggle teenagers, drinking and stuff and...and I thought 'isn't this just the perfect way to get back at my dad…'"

Harry swallowed thickly but didn't interrupt.

"I'd never ever spoken to a muggle before. But I thought, 'well, they're on my lawn, essentially, and they're only muggles...' And one of them, this older boy, two maybe three years older than we are now, saw me looking. And he smiled at me, and asked me if I was lost. And I told him he was on my lawn."

"He sounds like a wanker," said Harry grumpily. Draco laughed.

"He sort of…touched my shoulder, like this," Draco said, touching Harry's to demonstrate the action, "and said, 'I think this boy needs a drink…'" He closed his eyes, taking a deep, pained breath. "I don't remember everything that happened after that. The next thing I remember clearly was that boy—ugh, I can't even remember his name now!—he had my hand, and he was…_pulling_ me through the woods…I was falling all over the place…and then he sort of dropped me, on the ground. I asked him where we were, I think, and he told me I was beautiful. And I told him that _girls_ were beautiful, _I_ was _handsome_…and he laughed…"

Harry's hands closed slowly into fists. He remained silent.

"It…it was all right at first. When he was kissing me and holding me and everything…I even sort of liked it, I think…but then he had his trousers down and…" He sighed. "I must've told him to stop million times, out loud, in my head, _screaming_ probably…and it _hurt_…Merlin, you can't even imagine how much…and when it was over and I tried to ask him why he _hit_ me. Told me he wasn't a…a _faggot_ like me and he left me there."

Small drops of blood collected in Harry's palms where his fingernails where biting into them.

"I passed out for a while, then. And when I woke up, I put my clothes back on, went home, apologized to my father and I've never mentioned any of it to anyone until today."

_Ah_, thought Harry dully. _So this is what it feels like to have someone I want to murder more than Voldemort._

"So. That's why…you…you can't ask me to do that someone I love, Potter. I can't…I could never hurt you like that and you've got to stop trying to make me—"

"What are you talking about?" said Harry severely. "That—that was _rape_, Draco, you can't honestly think it would be that same if you—"

The look Draco gave him was heartbreak incarnate.

"Oh dear _god_, that's _exactly_ what you think, isn't it?"

"Let's not talk about this anymore, Potter…"

"No! We _are_ going to talk about it! Draco, I _love _you, it wouldn't be anything like that between us, you idiot!"

"It _would_! You don't know, you're a _virgin_, you don't know what it feels like—"

"Draco, I had the cruciatus curse put on me by Voldemort himself about four times last year and even if sleeping with you hurt as bad as _that_ did I'd still want to do it."

"Potter…"

"And it's not just that! You won't even let me _touch_ you! That doesn't hurt me at _all_!"

"You said it yourself," Draco said soberly, "I've got no self-control. If you did something like that to me, I might…" He sighed deeply, closing his eyes again. "I don't want to hurt you."

Harry sat up with a knee on either side of Draco's hips and kissed him hotly on the mouth. "Don't worry. You won't."

Draco groaned, trying instantly to fight the pleasure that built as Harry's body ground against his own. "Potter, don't!"

"Draco, please. You _need_ this. _I_ need this."

Sitting up, he planted his hands on Harry's hips, forcing them down against his own. "That doesn't hurt?" he asked angrily.

"No, idiot. You'd have to actually put it in for it to hurt."

"That's what you want? You want me to hurt you?"

"If that's what it takes."

Draco answered only with a low, animal growl as Harry began to toy with the growing hardness pressed against him. "You don't like it?" he asked huskily. Draco growled again.

"You know I do. Stop it."

"Draco." All movement stopped and he held the other boy's face in his hands so their eyes were locked on one another. "I swear if I don't like it I'll stop you."

"And what if I don't want to stop?" Draco demanded.

"You will anyway. You love me. And I trust you. So please…" The growling turned to something more along the lines of a purr as Harry kissed him. "…don't make me wait anymore."

Draco sighed. "If I'm hurting you even a little, you've got to _promise_ me you'll—"

"I know, I know!"

"…all right."

He barely managed the sentence before Harry had hold of him, stroking with inexpert but effective hands at the hard shaft until Draco cried out. "Ah…easy! Not so fast…if you keep that up I won't be able to do anything."

Harry's movements slowed but didn't stop. "Like this?" he asked, brow furrowed with concentration, somehow only managing to increase the agonizing pleasure.

Draco flung his head back. "_Merlin!_ Aha…only if you want me to finish before I even touch you, Potter…look, stop that," he said kindly, pushing Harry flat on his back. "I really don't need any help getting aroused at this point."

"S-Sorry," he stammered as Draco kissed his neck fiercely. "I don't really know what I'm doing…"

"Relax," Draco breathed soothingly. "It'll be even worse if you're tense. Does this hurt?"

Harry was sure his entire body blushed. "Mmm…Ah! St-stop! Wh-Why are you—don't touch me there!"

Unflinching grey eyes locked on his own. "Because it _hurts_ or because you're embarrassed?"

Harry clawed at Draco's back, but the invading touch remained. "It's…not that…it feels…you know…but it's _weird_!"

"And putting _this_ there wouldn't be?"

"I…didn't ask you to…_Draco_!"

"What did I say about relaxing, Potter?" said Draco lightly. "If you don't like it, I'll stop, but otherwise…" Harry gasped loudly as a second finger entered him.

"D-Draco…I c-can't take much more of this…

"No?"

Harry groaned, twisting desperately on the tangled mass of sheets. "Please…just _do_ it…"

Grimacing slightly, Draco leaned over him, his eyes never leaving Harry's. "You're _sure_ about this?"

"_Please!_"

Harry inhaled sharply as the head nudged against his entrance.

"Potter?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine, come _on_…"

He gasped for air as Draco pushed inside him, thrusting forward with a pained expression. "Are you all right?"

"It…ah…it hurts a little," he said, true to his word, "…but don't stop or anything, okay? I'm..f-fine…"

Draco remained utterly stationary. "Is it all right if I move?"

Harry nodded curtly, not trusting himself to open his mouth.

He pulled back slightly only to sink slowly in again while Harry panted and squirmed beneath him. "Is this okay?"

"Draco…please, stop being so…_careful_ about it! It's not any good if you're _worried_ the whole time! Just…_ah!"_

The sparks of sharp pain that had been flaring through his body were instantly blotted out by maddening pleasure as Draco rammed forward with about ten times his previous intensity. "Sorry!" he said immediately. "That was an accident, I—"

"Mm…do that again…"

"But doesn't it hurt when I—?"

Impatient, Harry wrapped his arms around Draco's shoulders and forced their bodies closer together. "It hurts more when you hold back like that! Don't make me ask again, Draco, just…please…"

He lost the capability to form words as Draco kissed his neck with sudden ferocity, gripping his hips to force himself further inside. "Like this?"

"_Yes_." His voice was a high, pleading whine. "_God_, Draco…" His nails dug deep into the blonde's shoulder, raising thin red lines in the flesh of his back as he withdrew again.

"Potter," he said in a harsh whisper as he surged forward again, "I don't think I can last like this much longer…"

Harry could find no words to answer him, instead kissing him desperately on the mouth, his back arching and his legs locking around Draco's hip to draw him in further as the first wrenching spasms of climax ripped through him.

Exhaling a muffled gasp into Harry's shoulder, Draco thrust into him a final time, unable to hold back as Harry's muscles tightened suddenly around him.

"There," mocked Harry with a weak little laugh, smoothing Draco's sweat-soaked hair with a satiated smile. "Didn't kill you, did it?"

"Are you hurt?" asked Draco moodily.

"Bit sore," Harry admitted, testing whatever muscles Draco wasn't laying on and finding most of them ached slightly. "Nothing to stop me wanting to do that all the bloody time, though."

"Don't exaggerate."

"I'm not. That was…" he kissed the top of Draco's head, grinning widely. "…perfect."

Draco snorted. "Go to sleep, Potter. Obviously fornicating makes you mental."

"_You_ make me mental. And I want to do it again."

"_Now?_"

"Now. Later. Forever."

"I'm _tired_…"

"I love you."

Draco planted one hand behind Harry's head, supporting himself with it so their eyes were level. "That's not a get out of jail free card, you know," he said, smirking as he pressed his mouth to Harry's.

* * *

_(a further a/n: (shifty eyes) Okay. I can explain that. See, I was just going to write a normal sex scene, right? And then the bookstore near my house had a sale and I sort of bought eight really dirty yaoi mangas and read them all in a row and then sort of ended up writing like…thirty-five hundred words of unspeakable filthiness that make me feel uncomfortable about myself both as a writer and as a human being._

…_yeah, I'm gonna go hide in a puddle of shame somewhere now._

_P.S._

_NO I DO NOT HAVE A RAPE FIXATION._

_P.P.S._

_REALLY! I DON'T! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!)_


	12. Perfect Opening Line

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Harry Potter, my mom would probably have to shut up about me getting a job. And she hasn't, so I guess I don't. Bummer.

_(a/n: …and we're back to the super slow updates! And badly written slow updates at that! YAY!_

_I maintain that this is somehow not my fault. Please come up with your own solid and justifiable reason as to why this is, because I cannot be arsed to do it myself.)_

* * *

Chapter 12: Perfect Opening Line

_Seven times removed_

_From the ones who thought they had it down_

_But don't it go to prove_

_Nothing cuts you like the lies of a friend_

_So hold it in your hands_

'_Cause you can't just switch it off_

—_The Frames_

* * *

The major difficulty Harry had found in sleeping with someone he was supposed to hate is that he really couldn't tell his friends about it.

"It is none of your bloody business what I was doing!" he found himself shouting for the fourth time since he'd got up. Several people turned to stare at him and he blushed slightly as his returned his attention to his breakfast.

"Now be reasonable, Harry," said Fred practically. "We can hardly stop at this stage!"

"We've gone and _made_ it our business, haven't we?" George added. "It does not speak well to our reputation to abandon a project half-finished."

"_Project_?" Harry snarled. "This is not a _project_, you arseholes! This is my _life_ and you are _ruining_ it!"

"Ruining it all night long, apparently. When did he get back this morning, George? Three a.m.? Four?"

"5:03. We've worked out _what_ you're doing, obviously, but not_ who_…"

"Isn't it enough that you've already fucked everything up once? Because of _you_ he nearly—"

"_He_?"

Harry's blood turned to ice water. "That's not what I said. I didn't say that. I didn't say _anything_."

"Oh yes you _did_," said Fred, looking both scandalized and vastly entertained. "'He'. You said_ 'he'_! It's a _bloke?_"

"_Keep your bloody voice down!_" said Harry frantically. "No! I haven't been seeing _anyone_, let alone a bloke, now _shut up_!"

"Merlin, no wonder you didn't want to tell us," laughed Fred.

"Oh look, Fred, he's _blushing_! Isn't that _precious_…"

"I swear I will murder you both right here, right now if you do not shut—"

"Tell us who it is and we will never speak of it again," said Fred flatly.

"What?"

"Tell us who you're shagging," confirmed George, "and we'll forget all about it."

"I'm not shagging anyb—"

"Or we could just go around telling everyone we run into about all the frenzied homosexual loving making you've been up to, because really that's funny enough on it's own…"

Harry's eyes narrowed. "…you wouldn't."

"Maybe not," Fred admitted. "But we _can_ follow you about every minute of every hour of every day from now until June."

"You will never have another moment of peace."

"No snogging—"

"—no shagging—"

"—you won't even be able to _speak_ to him without us breathing down both your necks the whole time—"

"—and he'll eventually chuck you in favor of someone who hasn't got a pair of personal stalkers tracking their every move."

"_Or_," Fred offered levelly, "you can just tell us already and we'll leave you and your little boyfriend to your illicit business."

"It's really up to you—"

"—sort of a personal decision."

"Take your time—"

"—because _we've_ got loads of it."

Harry stared at them, his hands tightening into bloodless fists, and he wondered what had _ever_ made him wish he had older brothers.

"I'm _not _saying you're right," he said stiffly. "And I'm not saying I'm going to tell you _anything_." Both twins leaned apprehensively forward. "But if you were and if I did, do you _swear_ not to tell anyone?"

"Harry! How can you suggest your dear, _dear_ friends would stoop to such dishonorable acts? I am _very_ offended right now, aren't you, Fred?"

"Quite! We would _never_—"

"And you're not going to give him any crap about it?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Unless we don't approve or something, in which case we will hex his face off and mount it over the fireplace."

Harry glared.

"Joking!" said Fred. "…mostly."

Harry let out a long, resigned sigh. "…all right. This is going to sound a bit weird…"

OoOoOo

"You told them _what?_"

Harry pulled another layer of sheets up over his head. "Don't bloody shout at me! I said I was sorry, didn't I?"

"Oh, and that makes it un-happen, then, does it? Of all the _stupid_ things—"

"Look, I panicked, all right? It was the first thing that popped into my—"

"_Weasley_? 'I'm shagging Weasley' was the first thing that popped into your head?"

"Well I didn't say it like _that_," Harry grumbled.

"You could have said it was a _girl_," Draco growled. "You could have said it was _Dumbledore_ for all I care! But _no_. It had to be Ron _fucking _Weasley, didn't it? Merlin, what the _hell _is wrong with you, Potter?"

"What's he ever done to you?"

"You told people you were _sleeping_ with him!"

"Well I'm _not _sleeping with him, so what does it fucking matter what I told them?"

"It just _does_, all right?"

Harry peered at him from under the blankets. "Draco."

"What?"

"Please tell me you aren't jealous of my imaginary relationship."

"…shut up, Potter."

Harry crawled across the mammoth bed to the edge where Draco was perched. "You can't be serious."

Draco crossed his arms and ignored him.

"Draco…"

"Shut up, Potter."

"Fine. But I'm going to put my head right here in your lap and give you sad little kicked-puppy looks until you talk to me."

"No you're not. I'm going back to my dormitory."

Harry gave him a wide eyed, tragic look. "I will develop abandonment issues."

"You do that."

"And separation anxiety."

"Have fun."

"And I'll be too traumatized to ever sleep with you again."

"I think we've established I'm far better at holding out than you are."

Harry scowled. "God, what are you being so _foul_ for?"

"You could've told them it was me!" Draco snapped.

"What?"

"I mean…you didn't have to lie. I didn't…I didn't think you were still that embarrassed of being with me, that's all."

"Embar—no! I'm not—Draco, it's got nothing to do with that, honestly! I'd never be embarrassed of you! Fred and George are _mental_, they'd never leave you alone if they knew, I was just protecting—"

"I don't need _you_ to protect me, Potter."

"Don't be an arse."

"_You're_ the arse. And I'm not scared of your stupid friends."

"They're not stupid. They'd be a lot easier to deal with if they were."

Draco sighed. "Look, I know I'm overreacting a little. Just…you know…the thought of you with anyone else, even if you're only making it up, sort of…pisses me off a bit. A lot, actually."

"You are a ridiculous person, Draco," said Harry with a laugh.

"Didn't used to be. I believe a certain green-eyed something has been clouding my judgment of late."

Harry snorted. "Don't suppose you're talking about jealousy, are you?"

"Git," Draco murmured, pushing him back on the bed.

OoOoOo

"I heard you come in, Harry," Ron said from one of the large fireside chairs many hours later as Harry crept through the commonroom as quietly as he could. Which was obviously not quietly enough. "Go to bed if you want but I'm just going to ask you about it tomorrow anyway."

Harry shrugged off his invisibility cloak. "Ask me about what?"

"About a game of exploding snap."

"Listen, Ron—"

"You _know_ what!"

"Look, I just panicked, okay? They wouldn't leave me alone, and I just—"

"Told them I was your boyfriend?"

"Er…yes?"

Ron put a hand to his temple and sighed. "Bet Malfoy loved that."

"Yeah, he wasn't exactly oh _god_ Hermione told you, didn't she? Oh, I'm going to _kill_ her!"

"You think I'm completely stupid, don't you?"

Harry blinked. "What?"

"You and Mione both think I'm some kind of total idiot. I _know_ about you and Malfoy. I've known for ages."

"I…ah…er…"

"I just didn't say anything because I was waiting for you to _tell_ me. You know, like a _friend_?"

"It's very…complicated…"

"No it isn't. You couldn't be buggered to tell your best mate about it and you thought I was too thick to work it out on my own."

"That…is not true…"

"Isn't it?"

"Er…no? No! Listen, I just—"

"Didn't trust me?"

"Are you actually going to let me answer or just shout at me the whole time?"

"I haven't decided."

"Ron," said Harry calmly. "The only reason I didn't tell you is because I thought you might do something completely insane to Draco and then I'd have to beat the crap out of you."

"You think I've got some sort of problem with gay people? Because I haven't. Wouldn't spend half as much time at Grimmauld Place if I did."

"No, I think you've got a problem with—god, did _everyone_ know about those two but me?—I think you've got a problem with who I'm being gay _with_."

Ron grimaced. "Yeah, I'm not exactly Malfoy's biggest fan. And if he ever pulls anything like whatever he did before Christmas he's eight different kinds of dead, but…if you're happy about it then I can be happy about it as well, can't I?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Dunno. Can you?"

"I haven't been sitting in the commonroom for the last nine hours just so I could tell you to bugger off, mate."

"I hope not," Harry laughed. "I dunno about you, but I'm completely exhau—hang on, what _did_ you tell Fred and George?"

"Hm?"

"They asked about…er…" He flushed slightly. "About what I told them, didn't they? What did you say?"

"I told them we were going out," said Ron in a tone of slight confusion.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Yes, I have obviously beaten the Common Decency Police into submission and stolen back my cliffhanger license, only to promptly return to viciously abusing it. But it's only a _little_ cliffhanger! _

…_well, little depending on how long it is before I can be buggered to update again, or indeed do anything other than laze around on my sofa eating chicken salad.)_


	13. Sad Songs

**Disclaimer: **Because you've come to expect them at this point, haven't you?

_(a/n: HOLY EARLY UPDATE, BATMAN!_

_Yes, you can all thank __**Netrixie**__ and her epic guilt tripping skills for the AMAZING and TOTALLY UNPRECEDENTED earliness you see before you today._

_Seriously. Go thank her. She's leaving for bootcamp soon and I demand that you all put nice things in her tiny little head._

_Now.)_

* * *

Chapter 13: Sad Songs

_And the light you gave_

_You took away when you were gone_

_It's a war that can't be won_

_With fists or talk or money_

—_The Frames_

* * *

"I thought that was what you wanted them to think!" said Ron over the sound of Harry hyperventilating loudly.

"Wh-why…WHY WOULD YOU EVER, EVER SAY THAT?!" Harry demanded.

"Why did _you_ say it?"

"_I_ was having a bloody _panic attack_ at the time! You were in a perfectly rational _fucking_ mindset and oh _god_ Draco is going to kill me!"

"Breathe, mate," said Ron soothingly. "Look, just sit down, nobody's going to kill anybody…"

"I can't handle being chucked by him again, Ron! I CAN _NOT_."

"He's not going to chuck you, just calm down…"

"_How am I supposed to calm down when you've just told the two loudest people in existence that I'm shagging you?!_"

"Well, I mean, technically you're the one that—"

"_Shut up!"_

"Look, this was your brilliant idea, Harry!" Ron snapped. "I just went along with it because we're _mates_ and it made _sense_, all right?"

"In what twisted fucking universe does that make sense, Ron?"

"Not the shagging bit! I mean letting people think we're going out!"

"_What _are you on about?"

"You know, to keep You-Know-Who from going after Malfoy! I thought…ugh, nevermind."

Harry's eyes snapped up. "No, what?"

"Well, I'm already buggered as far as You-Know-Who goes, aren't I? I'm your best mate, so if he starts going after people you care about I'm on the list already, right? So, even if it gets out that you're dating someone, if he thinks it's _me_ he'll leave off Malfoy, and I won't be any worse off then I was to begin with."

Harry's forehead scrunched as though Ron had suddenly turned into a ball of vector calculus. "That's really…brilliant, actually."

"I keep telling you," said Ron crossly. "I'm not _stupid_…"

OoOoOo

"No, Potter," said Snape before Harry had breathed so much as a hello in Draco's direction. "You won't be distracting my _competent_ students any further. You'll work with Longbottom today, he can hardly do any worse…" His lip curled upward in a slight sneer as Harry made a faint noise of protest. "Is there a _problem_, Potter?"

"…no," Harry grumbled, swiping his books off the space next to Draco with a sullen look. "Didn't want to work with him anyway. Obviously."

"Five points from Gryffindor," Snape said in an almost disinterested tone. "And next time I give you an instruction I expect you to follow it _without_ the insipid commentary."

Something slammed into his shin just as he opened his mouth again.

"Better move along, Potty," Draco warned with an unpleasant smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

Harry snorted.

"I do not believe I have said anything amusing, Potter," said Snape chillily.

"Er…no. No. Sorry. Er, budge up, Nev, I can't fit my books on the, er, sorry, sorry…"

"Harry, watch out, don't knock—nevermind…"

Harry swore loudly as his forearm struck Neville's cauldron.

"I do not allow profanity in this classroom, Potter, twenty points from Gryff—_oh for Merlin's sake, you idiot boy, what the _hell_ was in that cauldron?_"

Neville's face had lost all color. "I-I-I was just st-starting the h-h-h-hiccuping solution l-like it says on the board, sir—"

Snape grabbed Harry's arm, twisting it so it was directly under Harry's nose. "And does _this_ look like a hiccup to you, Longbottom?"

"W-W-Well—"

"It's an acid burn, Neville," Hermione offered helpfully. "I think you misread the second line, it said—"

"Since you are evidently far too illiterate to read simple instructions, Longbottom, you will have the pleasure of escorting your equally useless classmate to the hospital wing."

"I don't need—" Harry began, his teeth gritted slightly as pain spiked through his arm.

"And to the week's work of detentions you'll both be serving for this interruption."

"But we didn't_ do_ anythi—"

"_Two_ weeks."

"I'll take Potter to the hospital wing, Professor," Draco interrupted.

Several people whirled to stare at him, Snape included.

"Excuse me?"

"I think he's faking," said Draco quickly, looking twice as pale as Neville did. "That arm barely looks burned. I want to be there to dock him points if he is. If that's all right. Sir."

"Potter, if possible I now have _less _interest in your welfare than I did previously. Take whomever you like and _go_."

"I'm your mentor and you haven't got a choice," Draco snarled before Harry could open his mouth, grabbing him by the wrist of his unwounded arm.

"It's my fault," argued Neville morosely. "I should really—"

"I said _he hasn't got a choice_," repeated Draco in a tight voice.

OoOoOo

"What the hell was he playing at, anyway?" said Harry angrily, suddenly interrupting the silence that had settled over them as they made their way to the hospital wing.

"Longbottom?"

"_Snape."_

"Severus? Why? What did he do?"

"You_ can't _tell me you didn't notice! He _knew_ I needed to talk you and he made me sit next to Neville."

"Oh, he's doing legillimency in the middle of lessons now, is he?"

"And did you_ hear _him when you asked to take me to the hospital wing?"

"He told you you could take whoever you liked!"

"Because he wanted me to say that I wanted _you_ in front of everyone!"

"Why would he do that?"

Harry stared at him for a moment. He'd mostly only had these sorts conversations with people who agreed instantly that Snape was an evil git who was obviously out to get him at all times.

"Well…because…he's _Snape_," he said feebly.

Draco snorted derisively. "Oh, right. Of course."

Harry folded his arms, losing the effect somewhat when he immediately had to whip them apart again as the vast burn on his left one screamed in protest. "Well, he _is_."

"How can you be mad at Severus for nothing when that complete idiot Longbottom is the one who got you hurt?"

"It wasn't Neville's fault!" said Harry indignantly. "It's not like he pushed me into his cauldron, Draco. It was an accident."

"And if Longbottom wasn't so bloody stupid you'd've gotten a load of hiccupping solution on your arm instead of getting the flesh burned off it."

"He isn't _stupid_! He only gets bad marks in Potions because your darling _Severus_ is breathing down his bloody neck through the whole lesson telling him what an idiot he is!"

"He _is_ an idiot!"

"No he's _not_! And don't shout at me!"

"You shouted fir—ugh, nevermind. I don't want to argue."

Harry was not at all sure he felt the same way, but it is very difficult to argue with someone who refuses to argue back. "I—fine. Whatever."

Draco sighed. "What was it you needed to talk about, anyway?"

"Hm?"

"You said Severus knew you needed to talk to me."

"Oh. That. Er. Listen, I've been thinking—"

"And I already hate this conversation."

"Will you just _listen_, smartarse?"

"Sorry."

"I was thinking—and I talked to Ron about it, so that's not a problem—we were thinking that maybe what I told Fred and George wasn't such a bad—what are you doing?"

Draco had stopped walking and was staring very hard at the nearest wall. "It's a good thing we're already on the way to the hospital wing, Potter," he said in a very quiet voice, "because if you are about to tell me you're chucking me for Weasley I am going to punch this wall so hard my fist breaks."

Harry grabbed his hand and Draco immediately wrenched it away. "That is definitely _not _what I was going to say."

"And yet I still get the strange feeling that whatever it is is still going to piss me off immensely."

"We're only going to _pretend_ to go out."

"I was right."

"No, look, it's a really good idea, all right?"

"Oh, is it? Great, because it sounded like a _really fucking stupid_ one when you said it just then!"

"Draco, listen—"

"Listen to what? What conceivable reason could you possibly have for telling everyone you're going out with that complete tosser—"

"He is _not _a tosser," said Harry crossly. "He is my best friend. And he's only doing to help me!"

"Help himself into your trousers, more like."

"God, do you have any idea how much of an _arse_ you sound like right now?"

"I'm not the one fucking with our relationship, though, am I?"

"I'm not—look, I just don't want you to _die_, all right?"

"What are you _talking_ about?"

Angry tears threatened to well up in Harry's eyes and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep them from becoming visible. "You get that there's a psychotic mass murderer trying to kill me, right?"

"Don't use that as a bloody excuse!"

"Excu—_What?_"

"You can't just settle an argument with—"

"Shut up, Malfoy. Shut_ up_, shut your fucking face and _let me talk_."

Draco flinched. "_Fine._ Merlin, you don't have to—"

"The reason I want everyone to think I'm going out with Ron is so Voldemort won't try and _kill_ you, you stupid fuck."

Draco's face went blank. "What?"

"Or kidnap you or something like that! Look, it would've been different if we'd done this last year. If all I had to put up with was people making fun of me I'd've gone public about us in a _minute_, you know I would! But he's _back_ now and if anything ever happened to you because of me I—I'd—I have absolutely no bloody idea what I'd do."

"Hang on…" said Draco, brow furrowing worriedly. "All that stuff….everything you said about the Dark Lord being back is _true_?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?" he said icily. "I could've sworn I just heard you ask me whether Voldemort is actually back or not, but those cannot possibly be the words that have just come out of your mouth."

"Ah…well…the papers and everything…" Draco said, backpedaling furiously, "I mean…that's not…er…"

"YOUR DAD IS A DEATH EATER!" Harry bellowed.

"Can you not shout that in the hallway, please?"

"HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY NOT KNOW VOLDEMORT IS BACK WHEN YOUR DAD IS—"

"_I don't know!_ God! Keep your damn voice down! Look, they try to keep me out of all that stuff, all right?"

"So you've been seeing me all this time," said Harry through tightly gritted teeth, "thinking I was some sort of attention-crazed lunatic?"

"No," said Draco firmly. "That's not true at all. Look, I just never really—"

"I suppose you think I killed Cedric _myself_, then?"

"No I _don't_! Will you _please_ let me talk—"

"I think I can find the hospital wing on my own, thanks," said Harry coldly, and stormed off.

* * *

_(a further a/n: Yeah, Harry's a bit accident prone in this story, isn't he? I actually forgot until after I had outlined this entire chapter that he'd already injured himself in potions class earlier in the story and at that point I was just like "…ooookay. Harry is just going to be clumsy now, because I am _not_ redoing this shit." _

_And I didn't! Isn't it wonderful?__)_


	14. Sideways Down

**Disclaimer: **Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm not J.K. Rowling and neither are you.

_(a/n: Okay, have you ever like, tried to launch a webcomic? Because that's what I am currently doing._

_Well, that and having a total nervous breakdown. _

_See, I've been so busy fretting about whether I'm going to get accepted to this hosting service thingamadoo I've submitted it to that I had absolutely no time or energy to write this week. In fact I almost forgot to post the chapter I'd ALREADY written and totally neglected to respond to half the reviews I got for the last one because I haven't done anything but panic ceaselessly for about two and a half days and--_

_Oh wait. That has absolutely nothing to do with fanfic. Nevermind._

_P.S._

_I might remind you all that **Netrixie**, the wonderful shiny reason that you all get an update even though I was too busy wigging out to write one, is going away to boot camp on…like…Wednesday(?), so go be nice to her. Again.)_

* * *

Chapter 14: Sideways Down

_Maybe I should just move along_

_But you know I'd draw blood if that's what you want_

—_The Frames_

* * *

"So if you're not even _speaking_ to Malfoy," said Ron uncomfortably as Harry sulked over his breakfast the next day, "why exactly do we still need to do this?"

"Just because I'm cross with him doesn't mean I want him dead. Put your arm around me or something."

"Er…"

"And it'll really annoy him. No, no, not like that, be more affectionate! Christ, no wonder you don't have a girlfriend…"

"No wonder your boyfriend thinks you're annoying," Ron shot back.

"He doesn't think I'm _annoying_," said Harry bitterly. "We are fighting because _he_ is a stupid bastard. _I_ didn't do anything. No, you've got to sit closer, Ron, we don't look like a _couple_…"

Ron shifted awkwardly towards him. "I can't eat with my arm around you like this..."

"Use the other arm, you git."

"Oh. Yeah. That works better. Er. Right."

"Good morning, you little sexual deviant," said George, taking the seat next to Harry's as Fred took the one next to Ron's. "You've got astonishingly terrible taste in partners."

"Leave him alone," said Ron, the arm around Harry's shoulders tightening protectively.

"I was talking to Harry. Seriously, mate, of every bloke to go gay for—"

"—he picked_ me,_ so you can both stuff it, all right?"

"Oh, _can_ we?" inquired Fred dangerously. "Can we also glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth so you can no longer perpetrate your disturbing fetishes on our dear, innocent little friend?"

"No, but you can leave us the hell alone."

"That sounds like a lot less fun than our idea, doesn't it, Fred?"

"It certainly does."

"You said you wouldn't do this!" Harry growled in a low, angry voice. "You _promised."_

"We promised when you were keeping it a secret—"

"—and since it's obviously not a secret anymore—"

"—we'll be taking the piss out of you until it stops being funny."

"Or until we're all dead."

"And I'd bet on the second one if I were you."

"It's still a secret, sort of…"

"Yeah, I can tell by the way you're practically mounting him at the breakfast table, Ron."

Ron flushed brilliantly and scooted several inches away from Harry. Harry stared at his bacon.

"Hey, Fred?"

"Yes, George?"

"Perhaps it's just my strange, wacky dictionary that says this, but in order for stuff to be a secret, there have to be people who _don't_ know about it, right?"

"Why, I do believe that's correct, George."

"And all these people staring and whispering, they're probably doing that because they _do_ know about it, aren't they?"

"That seems like a fair assumption."

"And if everyone knows about it, it's not really a secret."

"A reasonable conclusion, I feel."

Harry lifted his head tentatively. Half the great hall was indeed staring at him.

"Fucking fantastic," he said under his breath.

OoOoOo

"Oh, excellent," muttered the owner of the pale grey eyes that were staring harder than any other pair in the room. "No, go on, just put your bloody arm around him again, Weasley, really…"

"Hilarious though this may be," said Pansy, "I must as your friend insist that you stop being a complete tosser about this and actually talk to him."

"Who says we're—did he just put his hand on Potter's leg? Dammit, I can't see under the stupid table—who says we're friends?"

"I don't hear you complaining to anyone else about your love life."

"Are they _holding hands_? I swear if he touches him again I'm going to—"

"If it's bothering you that much, go and tell him to stop."

"I don't get to decide what he does."

"Well you _definitely_ don't get to sit here whining to me about it. I _mean_ it. Either do something or shut up moaning about it. You're ruining my breakfast."

Draco picked moodily at his toast. "He won't even _listen_ to me."

"Well, you _did_ call him a liar."

"That isn't what I meant. I just—wait, did _you_ know he wasn't making it up?"

Pansy gave him a look as though concerned he might be slightly retarded. "Of course he wasn't making it up. Who makes up things like that? What did you think, Diggory fell down a ditch or something?"

"No, I just—I dunno—I thought, maybe _somebody_ killed Diggory andPotter just, just went into shock or something, and blew it all out of—"

"Merlin, you are so stupid it frightens me a little."

"Look—"

"And you wonder why he's cross with you. Look—ugh, can't believe these words are actually leaving my mouth—I am officially siding with Potter on this one."

"What?"

"You're a git and he _should_ be mad at you. I know _I_ would be. Now get your scrawny arse over there and don't come back without details of the fantastic make-up sex you two had."

"But—"

"_Go_."

Draco put his fork down, grumbling, "What the hell sort of friend sides against you in arguments with people they don't even like?"

"The good sort," said Pansy sagely, giving him a small shove with her shoulder.

OoOoOo

"Can I have a word with you, Potter?"

"No."

"It's important."

"Too bad."

"_Very_ important."

"I'm eating, Malfoy. Kindly bugger off."

"Potter—"

"He said _bugger off_," Ron snapped.

"I _heard_ what he said, Weasley. And public displays of affection are completely inappropriate while people are eating, by the way. Ten points from Gryffindor."

"I've got my arm around him!" said Ron indignantly. "Stop acting like I've got him bent over the table or somethi—"

"Fifteen. Points. From. Gryffindor," said Draco in a voice so angry it shook slightly. "And if you say one more word it'll be_ fifty_. Potter, hallway. _Now_."

"Fine," said Harry acidly. "I'll be back in a minute, _sweetheart_."

Ron turned faintly pink as Harry kissed his cheek and Hermione suddenly became very interested in her eggs.

"Right. Er. Bye."

OoOoOo

"Here's a fucking tip, Malfoy," said Harry when they were safely out of the great hall. "If you want someone to stop being mad at you, don't start by taking thirty-five points from their house for no apparent reason."

"I'm _sorry_," said Draco. "That was stupid, I just…he was touching you and…oh, nevermind. You can have them all back for talking to me, all right?"

"That's a shame, because I'm not _going _to talk to you."

"Potter,_ please_," said Draco desperately. "You don't have to talk. But at least listen."

"Why should I? Are you going to say something to make up for the fact that I slept with someone who thinks I'm completely mad?"

"I don't think you're mad, Potter! I _don't_! I just—"

"You just _what?_"

"I just _wanted_ you to be mad, all right? Or lying, or whatever! If—if it was just that you were crazy or something, if he wasn't really back, then my parents wouldn't have to get roped into all this crap again!"

"What are you on about, Malfoy?" grumbled Harry.

Draco took a deep breath. "If he's back, my parents…my parents have to go back to being Death Eaters. Pansy's too."

Harry kept his arms folded, not looking at him. "Yeah. I know."

"You _don't_ know. At least if the people you care about get killed in all this, they died being good or noble or whatever fucking qualities you people use to justify things. What do people like Pansy and I get to say? 'Oh, my dad? Yeah, he died being a bigoted idiot, actually! Oh yes, slaughtering a load of people who didn't do anything! That's right, it _was _on the orders of the lunatic who murdered my boyfriend's parents. Charming fellow, he was.' And at least he _believes_ it, the thick bastard, but Mother couldn't care less about all this pureblood crap and she just goes along with because that's what people _tell_ her she thinks. "

"They don't have to. If they really wanted to change, Dumbledore could—"

"Dumbledore can't fix everything!" Draco interrupted. "Believe me, if he's back, my parents are stuck with this and so am I."

"You don't have to be like them. You _aren't_ like them. And I don't think Parkinson is either."

"I don't think it matters."

Checking that the corridor was empty, Harry kissed him quickly on the mouth. "Of course it matters, stupid. And if this thing with Ron bothers you that much, I won't do it."

Draco smirked slightly. "You won't?"

"Of course not. I'm not going to ruin a real relationship for the sake of an imaginary one. Obviously."

"That really makes me wish it weren't such a good idea," Draco sighed.

Harry blinked at him. "It's what?"

"Come on, Potter," he said with a grin, kissing Harry on the forehead before putting on a far more serious face to walk back into the great hall with. "I'd better get you back before your _boyfriend_ comes after me…"

* * *

_(a further a/n:…oh, forget it. I'm too busy panicking to write a second one…try back next week...)_


	15. Bad Bone

**Disclaimer:** Oh, still not J.K. Rowling, by the way.

_(a/n: Okay. Here's the thing._

_My dad sort of died last week of a massive heart attack. I'm trying really hard not to let it get in the way of my updates, but I haven't managed to get much work done and this chapter came out sort of terrible…_

_  
Oh well. Please try to tolerate it and I'll try to suck less in future.)_

* * *

Chapter 15: Bad Bone

_There's a bad bone inside of me  
All my troubles started there  
And all the cracks are adding up to be  
A little more than you can bear  
_

_When I met you, you were bitter still  
From a scar you're never gonna show  
And I was cursed with a jealousy  
That's killed every love I've ever known…_

—_The Frames

* * *

  
_

There was, Harry was beginning to notice, an incredibly fine line between "adorably protective" and "horribly fucking annoying".

"Draco," said Harry quietly, kissing Draco's naked shoulder and taking a calming breath. "I really do not want to talk about Ron right now."

"Sorry," Draco said, leaning back on the vast mattress to stare apologetically at Harry. "I know I keep bringing it up, but does he have to _touch_ you so much?"

"We're supposed to be dating, Draco. People sort of expect us to come into physical contact once in a while."

"I know," Draco sighed. "Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," said Harry. "Just try to understand how annoying you're being. How would you like it if I was constantly accusing Parkinson of trying to shag you?"

"Pansy is a lesbian."

"Ron is straight."

Draco snorted. "He _snogged_ you yesterday!"

"It's_ pretend_ snogging!"

"Oh, so that was an imaginary tongue I saw down your throat in the library, then?"

"He didn't _want_ to. I just thought you know, every other couple in the school's been caught snogging in there at least once, so—"

"_We_ haven't."

"And we never will be, either."

"No," said Draco sullenly, not looking at him. "I suppose not."

Harry frowned, hovering over Draco as he fiddled uncomfortably with the bedding. "What's that meant to mean?"

"Nothing."

"Obviously it means_ something_ or you wouldn't be making that face."

"What face?"

"_That_ one."

Draco propped himself up on his elbows and crushed his mouth against the other boy's. "_God_, when I say it's nothing, I mean it's _nothing_, Potter. And I didn't get you out of Umbridge's lesson so you could complain about my face," he added, trailing wet, lingering kisses down Harry's neck.

Harry chewed his bottom lip. "Just how easy do you think I am to distract, anyway?"

"Fantastically easy," Draco purred in his ear.

OoOoOo

"Maybe it _was_ nothing," said Ron with a shrug.

"He's mad at me," Harry said, ignoring him. "I should've _known_ he didn't want me doing this with you…"

"You _did_ know. Didn't he say something like 'Harry, don't go out with Weasley, please, I think he's secretly trying to shag you?'"

"No."

"He didn't?"

"Well, not like that. He never calls me Harry."

Ron drummed his fingers on the surface of the library table. "But he told you he didn't like this idea and you did it anyway."

"He said I could—"

"But he didn't say he _wanted_ you to. That's different."

"It's…well…"

"_And_ you'restill cross with him for not believing you about you-know-who," Hermione put in, her grip on her book tightening slightly as Ron put an arm around Harry's shoulder, which he did not remove even after the trio of giggling third-year girls lurking nearby had passed.

"_That_ doesn't have anything to do with—"

"Oh, I'm sure it doesn't," she said in the sort of calm, tactful tone used primarily when one is politely lying to one's friends, "but he probably _thinks_ it does."

"Why would he—"

"Because sometimes boys are _stupid_," she said curtly, snapping her book shut with a loud _crack_. "I'm going to go to—to the—I'm just going to go. You two _enjoy_ yourselves, won't you?"

"Why would we enjoy studying?" Ron called to her retreating back in a puzzled tone as Harry laughed under his breath.

OoOoOo

"Merlin, _what_ was she in such a mood about?" asked Ron as they entered the deserted commonroom several hours later.

"Ron, I've been telling you for six hours, _I don't know_. Maybe she's got, I dunno, PMS or something. Girls are _weird_."

"Did you see the _look_ she gave me, though? What did I _do_?"

Harry put his books down on one of the tables near a sofa, before throwing himself down on the cushions. "I don't know, Ron."

"And the way she was talking—"

"You don't think I'm being paranoid, do you?"

"Like I was just totally—what?"

"About Draco, I mean. I dunno, maybe I overreacted a bit. We _did_ have sex—"

"Didn't need to hear that."

"—and he wouldn't do _that_ if he was mad at me, would he?"

"I have no idea under what circumstances Malfoy would or would not have sex with you, Harry. And I _like_ having no idea."

"Then I again, I might still have sex with _him_ even if I was angry. It's _really_ good sex."

"Oh god _please_ stop talking."

"Sorry," said Harry in the sort of absent tone which indicated he hadn't been listening to a word Ron had said. "You probably don't want to hear this."

"No. No I do not."

Harry sighed, scooting over on the sofa so Ron had room to sit. "Sorry, he repeated. "I just…I worry so much about how things are going to work out for us, you know?"

"Yeah," said Ron dully. "I know."

"It sort of scares me sometimes. How we can love each other so much and still have so much go wrong."

"Well it hasn't gone wrong yet," Ron said comfortingly. "Can't you at least wait for something to actually happen before you start panicking about it?"

Harry grinned. "That'd be a lot easier, wouldn't it?"

"I have to imagine it would."

Harry gave a short laugh. "I don't mean to sound like a total ingrate, by the way."

"Hm?"

"Complaining about us going out and stuff. I'm really glad you thought of it, honestly. I just spend so much time focused on Draco I come off like a total wanker sometimes."

"You're not a wanker," Ron said, patting his shoulder reassuringly.

"Yeah, I am. But thanks anyway."

"You don't have to thank me," Ron said, his cheeks coloring faintly. "It's not like I was ever going to have a proper girlfriend anyway, was I?"

"Sure you—"

"No I wouldn't. Look, for the last three years I've been in love with a girl who can't take a bloody hint. And I can't even think about other girls like that, believe me, I've tried—"

"Mione'll come round eventually, Ron, you've just got to—"

"Got to_ what_? Harry, I couldn't be more obvious about it if I threw her down in the middle of Transfiguration and shagged her on one of the desks. She's ignoring me on purpose because she doesn't want to hurt my stupid _feelings."_

"Don't be daft. How do you explain all that stuff in the library, then?"

"You mean when she shouted at me and called me stupid? I just_ did_ explain that."

"She was _jealous_—"

Ron laughed derisively. "Thanks, Harry. But stop trying to make me feel better."

"I'm_ not_—"

"And at least now I get to go out with someone who doesn't think I'm a total waste of space."

"Nobody thinks you're a waste of space, Ron."

"_You _don't. But_ she_ thinks I'm an idiot and so do my brothers and half the professors and—"

"Ron, _stop_ it—"

Ron turned suddenly so they were facing each other. "I don't_ want_ to stop," he said, and kissed Harry full on the mouth.

OoOoOo

"Ron," said Harry blankly after several silent minutes.

"Yeah."

"Did you just snog me?"

"I think I may have."

"_Why?_"

"I have _no idea._"

"_What do you mean you have no_—"

"_I dunno_!" said Ron, his tone bordering on panic. "I have _absolutely _no idea! I just turned around and you were right there just _looking_ at me and I—"

"_Snogged_ me! You _snogged_ me!_ Why would you do that?_"

"I dunno! It was an accident!"

"_How do you accidently snog somebody, Ron?_"

"Well, maybe not an _accident_…"

"But you don't fancy me!"

"I know!"

"You fancy _Hermione_!"

_"I know!"_

"So _what the hell was that?!_"

"God, I don't know…" He buried his face in his hands and sighed. "All that stuff I said is true, Harry. You're the only person that really thinks anything of me, you know? You're my best mate."

"And _why_ does that have to result in snogging, exactly?"

"I dunno! It doesn't! I just…when you started going out with Malfoy…you started lying to me all the time and he's all you ever talk about and I just want everything to be back to normal!"

"_Well you don't normally snog me, do you, Ron?!_"

"_Please_ don't shout that."

"Why? You can _do_ it but can't _hear_ about it?"

"_I just thought the maybe the reason it bothered me so much is because I was in love with you or something!_"

"And?"

"Well…I'm definitely not."

"AND YOU HAD TO SNOG ME TO WORK THAT OUT?!"

"Stop shouting!"

_"Do you have any idea what Draco is going to do to you when he finds out about this?"_ demanded Harry in an angry whisper.

"So don't tell him."

"I can't just _not tell him."_

"Sure you can. Just don't mention it. Ever. To anyone. Especially not Hermione. Not that she'd even—"

"_She fancies you back, you fucking moron!_" Harry snarled.

"She what?"

"She _told_ me she fancies you! And she made me swear up and down _just like you did_ that I'd _never ever_ tell because you _obviously_ didn't fancy her back and you're both so stupid I just—I just want to knock your heads together like _coconuts_ or something—"

"You want to do _what_?"

"Forget it," said Harry in a tone that left no room for questioning. "I am _not_ doing this right now. I'm going to bed. And tomorrow you and I are staging a very public break-up."

* * *

_(a further a/n: ...for some reason I am oddly entertained by Ron's whiny self-deprecating emo rant. It was strangely fun to write after all the time I had to spend writing him as the best friend EVER who is AWESOME and NICE and HELPFUL and not at all JEALOUS OF ANYTHING and does not even VAGUELY RESEMBLE that guy Ron you might have read about in those books by that british lady. Personally I happen to like Ron, but if you haven't noticed that he is the sort of person who is constantly jealous of everyone all the time you are not paying very much attention._

_Oh, and if the end of the chapter reads weirdly to you, that's because the last 435 words of it were supposed to be part of the next chapter. But I just felt too guilty leaving everyone on that vicious a cliffhanger when I have no idea if the next update will be anywhere close to on time._

_ And also because I feared that you might all kill me with sticks.)_

_(a further, further a/n: The coconut thing is something my friend LuLu said the other day, which made me laugh for so long I had to throw it into this chapter because she is obviously insane.)_


	16. Taking the Hard Way Out

**Disclaimer: **If I stop writing these, will we all just I assume that I _do_ own Harry Potter?

_(a/n: Firstly, I must offer my infinite thanks to everyone who sent their condolences and hope they can forgive me for being a total douche about replying. I AM SO SORRY. My internet has just been completely buttfucked for like two weeks so I didn't even get to see half of them until like two days ago because my computer crashes every time I so much as glance meaningfully in its direction. Which meant that the only productive machine I had access to was Marvin, and he doesn't internet, and is thus almost entirely useless. _

_Anyway._

_I have to apologize in advance for the somewhat spastic nature of this chapter. I still seem to be having a hard time writing (my dad was a writer as well and whenever something reminds me of him I have to go sit in a corner and be a sad little demi-orphan for a half an hour to forty-five minutes before I can work properly again) and I think there are a few too many scene changes, but I couldn't think of a way to fix this that wouldn't result in this getting put up even more appallingly late than it already is._

_And hey, it sucks a bit less than the last one._

_A bit.)_

_

* * *

  
_

Chapter 16: Taking the Hard Way Out

_Well, I see you found_

_What you were always looking for_

_Oh I hope you're happy now_

_And I can't take away from you_

_This moment that you love_

_I wouldn't understand it anyhow_

—_The Frames_

_

* * *

  
_

"You complete _bastard!_"

"Harry, at least let me explain—"

"Shut up!"

"Harry, you're making a scene," said Ron reasonably as he dodged the textbook Harry had just hurled at his head.

"YOU'RE CHUCKING ME, RON, I'M ALLOWED TO MAKE A BLOODY SCENE!" bellowed Harry as loudly as he could.

Several girls darted out into the commonroom.

"Look, can't we just be civil about thi—OW! Merlin, what the _hell_, Harry, that actually hit me right in the—er, I mean, STOP BEING A PRAT, THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I DON'T WANT TO GO OUT WITH YOU ANYMORE!"

"OH, _I'M_ BEING A PRAT, AM I?" Harry shouted back, trying not to notice the fact that roughly half of Gryffindor house was watching this conversation with avid interest.

"YEAH. Er. Yeah, you are! And I'm chucking you! I'm…er…I'm chucking you for Hermione Granger!"

"Oh that's just—you're _what_?"

A bushy brown head that had been sulked in a corner pretending not to listen lifted suddenly. "Don't you _dare_ drag me into this, Ronald," she said in a fierce whisper.

"No," said Ron earnestly. "I mean it. Er. Will…would you…er…um…d'youwannagooutwithmeorsomething?"

"Would I what?"

"Would you. Hermione. Like to go out or something. With me."

Hermione folded her arms and stared at him until Ron was blushing so hard it looked like his head had caught fire.

"I was literally starting to think you'd never ask."

"I mean, if you don't want to, that's all right, I understand, you—er—yes? Did you say yes? Harry, did she say _yes_?"

"Ron, I'm right here, you don't have to ask someone else what I _just_ said to you."

Harry stifled a small laugh, fixing his face back to the most fiercely angry expression he could manage.

"You know what? You two fucking deserve each other," he said nastily, hoping no one was still paying enough attention to notice how he nearly smiled as he did so.

OoOoOo

_Why do there have to be so many bloody people in this castle?_ He thought many hours later, poring over the myriad dots speckling the marauder's map and having absolutely no luck in finding the one he was looking for.

_Where the _hell_ is he?_

He checked his watch; it was far too late for him to still be in class, but he wasn't in the Slytherin commonroom or the library or…

_Aha!_

A miniscule dot labeled "Draco Malfoy" drifted out of the dungeons.

_Near Snape's office…_he mused silently as he darted down the nearest staircase. _I wonder_—

"What are you doing down here?"

Harry gasped loudly in surprise as someone grabbed his shoulder. "Draco. Ah! I was, er, I was looking for you, actually! Er. Why are you—?"

"It's not that late yet, is it? We weren't supposed to meet until—"

"No, it isn't. I just…wanted to see you."

Draco looked at him curiously for a moment. "Why?"

Harry scowled. "Do I need a reason?"

"You were bolting down the stairs, Potter. You ran right past me. Do you always go down stairs like that?"

"Well…no…"

"Then something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong. It's something you'll like, actually—"

"You're done being stupid with Weasley."

"Ron and I just—er…yeah. Yeah. How'd you know that?"

"_Everyone_ knows," he said simply.

"Oh." He frowned slightly. "I sort of thought you'd be…you know…happier about it…"

"Potter, I don't really—" his expression softened suddenly, and his tone became gentler. "Sorry. I've just…I've got a lot on my mind at the moment. And I am happy. Really."

"Draco?"

"Mm?"

"What were you doing down here before I came, anyway?"

"Nothing important," he said, smiling without any real emotion. "Now come on, let's go upstairs and celebrate your break-up properly."

OoOoOo

"It's just weird, is all I'm saying," Harry grumbled, poking disinterestedly at his bacon. "He didn't say another word after that. We just slept together again, but _that_ was weird too, he's usually more—"

"I'm eating, Harry," said Ron shortly.

"Oh, shut up, if I can watch the two of you fawn over each other all morning that you can goddamn bloody well listen to me talk."

Hermione turned faintly red and Ron stopped holding her hand under the table.

"What the hell would he even be doing down there?"

"His parents are friends with Snape, aren't they?" Ron pointed out.

"Well….yeah…"

"Well, why do you talk to Sirius?"

"That…is completely different."

"How?"

"Sirius isn't a miserable greasy git like Snape."

Ron blinked at him. "Harry—"

"Look, it's not the same, all right? It's not _suspicious_ of me to talk to Sirius!"

"Why do you need something to be suspicious of?"

"I—" Harry started to shout, than paused, lowering his voice and flushing slightly. "—don't," he finished. "And I'm _not_ suspicious of him, I'm just….interested."

Hermione sighed pointedly at him. "If you love him so much, why are you going so far out of your way to ruin things?"

"Just what," growled Harry in a low, offended voice, "is that supposed to mean?"

"You are deliberately trying to find problems in your relationship where there _aren't_ any problems," she elaborated flatly.

Harry's chair scraped loudly backwards across the floor as he stood. "You know, I think I'm done eating, actually," he informed them caustically as he stormed out of the great hall.

OoOoOo

_At least they gave me one decent idea_, he grumbled silently, scratching out the last lines of a letter to Sirius with a certain unnecessary aggressiveness.

"Ooh. Writing love letters, are we?"

"Isn't he _precious_?"

Harry tried desperately to ignore the two boys hovering over his shoulders.

"Is it something _dirty?_" Fred demanded as Harry tried to shield the parchment from them.

"Can we _see_ it?" George inquired.

"It's not a bloody love letter, you arseholes. It's for Sirius. And in case you didn't notice I haven't got a boyfriend to be writing to anyway."

They looked at Harry. They looked at each other.

And they dissolved into a fit of hysterical laughter.

"Oh god—" cackled Fred.

"—don't tell us—" George giggled.

"—you actually think—"

"—we don't know about you and Malfoy!"

"You—_you_—_what_?"

"Merlin, look at his face, George! _Look at his face!_"

"_Priceless!_"

"H…how…how long have you…"

"Since about a day and a half after you started seeing him," Fred informed him, wiping tears of mirth from his maliciously shining eyes. "Honestly, when will you learn—"

"_Nothing_ gets past us," finished George cheerily.

"But…that…you let me…why…"

"Why did we let you pretend to go out with Ron?"

Harry nodded stiffly.

"You're like a brother to us, mate," said Fred earnestly.

"And when our brothers lie to us," explained George, "we have a personal policy of making them suffer for it."

"…and also because it was fucking funny."

"That too."

"It's not that I wanted to lie to you," said Harry blankly, "or anyone really…I just thought…I didn't think you'd approve…"

"We don't."

"At all."

"Actually we're just waiting for one of you to chuck the other so we have an excuse to kill him horribly."

"But in the meantime, if you're happy, we're happy, aren't we, Fred?"

"_Exceedingly_ happy."

Harry swallowed the urge to punch their exceedingly happy heads in and said, "You are both complete bastards, you know that?" in a tight, annoyed voice before picking up his bookbag and exiting the library.

OoOoOo

There were few better ways in the world to relieve stress than the one Harry was presently participating in.

He let out a long, ragged breath into Draco's shoulder as his body tensed against the other boy's.

Draco's eyes narrowed with concern. "Something wrong?"

"'Course not," he breathed, pushing aside the odd, nagging feeling of forgetfulness poking insistently at him, distracting himself with the taste of Draco's skin.

Draco growled pleasurably, running his tongue along the exposed skin of Harry's neck. "You seem a little distracted, love."

"You're one to talk. And don't call me 'love.'"

"That was last time. And I'll call you whatever I want."

Harry frowned, but the desire to question him further melted away as Draco's tongue slipped into his mouth again.

"Take your clothes off," he told him unnecessarily, as Harry was already half out of them anyway, complicating the task by kissing Harry insistently the entire time he was disrobing.

Still something prodded unpleasantly in the far reaches of his memory, putting an irritating strain on the far more interesting task at hand. _I need more of a distraction…_

He gave Draco a small push in the direction of the bed that seemed to appear the second they walked in the room these days.

"What, are we switching roles now?" Draco inquired, eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.

Harry rolled his eyes. "As if you'd let me. Just sit there, all right?"

Draco gave him a curious look, but sat on the edge of the bed, as fully clothed as Harry was naked. He straightened suddenly as Harry dropped to the floor in front of him.

"…Potter?"

"Quiet," said Harry seriously. "I'm trying to concentrate. I've only done this twice."

"Can't we just—ah!" He inhaled sharply as Harry's hands brushed forcefully against the stiffening bulge in his pants. No further protests were lodged as Harry undid the zipper, and Draco didn't so much as breath as Harry thumbed the hard ridges of his erection.

_"Potter!"_ he gasped loudly as Harry's tongue made contact. Harry ignored him, swallowing thickly as his lips slid over as much of Draco as he could handle without choking. Draco groaned audibly.

"Is this all right?" he asked, or tried to ask, the syllables unsurprisingly a bit difficult to form with his mouth otherwise occupied.

Draco said nothing, his fingers digging into Harry's shoulders as he moaned wordlessly, which Harry took as a positive response.

He leaned forward again, a hand resting on each of Draco's thighs to keep them apart as the blonde began to squirm.

"Hold still, I can't do this if you keep moving!" he started to say, but found Draco's hands had knotted absently in his hair, pulling him forward until his throat constricted in protest.

_Can't let me be in control for five bloody seconds, can you?_ he thought as his eyes began to water. _Shame I like it so much…_

And he _did_ like it; the fact that he and his frail, uninteresting body could fill someone like Draco Malfoy with such feral, demanding pleasure excited him more than anything he could ever remember and left him at least as hard as Draco himself.

"Ah…Potter…I think I'm going to—"

"What time is it?" demanded Harry frantically.

"_What?_"

"I just remembered something! God, how did I forget about—"

"You've got to be _fucking_ joking."

"Shut up! I said I'd be in the commonroom at midnight!" He checked his watch. 11:58. "Sirius is going to—god, I'd never get to a fireplace in time—_dammit_!"

Draco glared at him. "You couldn't have mentioned that before you decided to suck me to within one second of an orgasm, Potter?"

"Shut up, Draco. I…I need to get to the fireplace, and I need you to _shut the fuck up_…"

Of course there are certain problems with voicing such thoughts in the room that Harry was voicing them in.

"Should I just…come back…later…?" Sirius's head inquired politely from the perfect replica of the Gryffindor commonroom fireplace that had suddenly made itself present behind Harry.

OoOoOo

"Well," said Draco comfortingly some time later, "that could've gone worse."

"_How?_"

"If you'd remembered a second later he'd've seen you swallowing my—"

Harry hit him in the face with a pillow.

Draco laughed. "It wasn't that bad. Honestly."

"_It wasn't that bad_?" Harry repeated incredulously. "He saw us—he saw _me_—he wouldn't even look at me."

"He was _embarrassed_. What would you do if you walked in on him and that werewolf of his?"

Harry flushed at the mere thought. "I wouldn't _shout_ at them, though…"

"Yeah, well, they're not fifteen. And you don't hate the werewolf."

Harry closed his eyes and sighed, rolling over to face away from him.

"Sorry._ Lupin_. You don't hate _Lupin_," he corrected himself.

"No, it's not that…but yeah, stop calling him 'werewolf', he's got a name…I'm still a bit upset, I guess. About him. What he said. How he left like that. Like he couldn't stand the sight of me."

Draco wrapped his arms around the smaller boy's skinny frame. "That wasn't it. He just needed time to get his head around it, I think. And I guarantee it's nothing to do with _you_."

"Hmmph."

"That can't possibly surprise you. Six months ago you'd've felt the same as he does."

"Six months ago I didn't know a damn thing about you."

"Well, give him six months and maybe he'll know better."

Harry merely sighed again, tucking himself closer into Draco's arms.

"Look, you want a _bad_ reaction? Think what would've happened if it'd been my dad that saw us."

Harry snorted despite himself.

"Not doing _that_, even. Let's say I was kissing you…" Harry smiled faintly as he demonstrated this, "and for what ever reason dear old dad walks in…"

"Oh dear."

"Now at that point, he's going to shout something involving some combination of the words 'mudblood', 'faggot', and 'traitor', and probably 'filth' as well, he likes that one, and some other assorted swearwords, he's not very eloquent once you've really pissed him off…"

"Naturally."

"And then…FLASH!" He lifted one arm to mimic the brandishing of a wand. "That's him killing you for touching me. FLASH!" He repeated the gesture. "That's him killing me for being a traitor. FLASH!" Harry laughed, though the situation was more morbid than funny. "That's him killing himself for being a terrible parent. And then my mother comes in and pours herself a drink while the house elves bury our corpses in the woods."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Honestly…"

Draco grinned, burying his face in Harry's neck. "Now doesn't that seem like a lot more trouble than having a godfather who's only worried that I'm somehow going to get you killed?"

And as he drifted off to a fitful sleep in Draco's arms, he thought silently that Sirius had absolutely nothing to worry about.

It was far more likely to go the other way around.

* * *

_(a further a/n: …well, I got bored of there not being smut, obviously. And the only thing that I have more fun writing than smut is smut that gets interrupted in the most awkward conceivable way._

_I feel I have accomplished that feat today.)_

_(a further, further a/n: The Room of Requirement just eats plot holes for breakfast, doesn't it?)_


	17. A Caution to the Birds

**Disclaimer: **MAYBE IF I SHOUT IT REALLY, REALLY LOUDLY I WILL SUDDEN BECOME J.K. ROWLING AND NOT HAVE TO WRITE ANY MORE OF THESE BLOODY THINGS!

...NO. NO, THAT DID NOT WORK AT ALL.

_(a/n: Oh look, I'm not dead! You can still kill me for not updating! Rejoycify!_

_Yes. Well. Apparently my muse cannot multitask. I utterly lost the ability to write original fiction soon after becoming a fanfic writer, and now that I have started my first original project in over a year and a half I hit a hideous roadblock in the story._

_No worries. I think it's cleared up now._

_But this chapter is still sort of crap._

_You're used to that by now, right?)_

_

* * *

  
_

Chapter 17: A Caution to the Birds

_And with eyes that never look_

_Past this moment underfoot_

_And this reading in the cards_

_Is a caution to the birds_

—_The Frames

* * *

  
_

_It was a dream, he reminded himself sharply. Just a dream, a normal dream, a dream that had nothing to do with mass murderers prying into his brain. Just. A. Drea—_

_Color flashed. Green. Bright green. That very special shade of bright, bright green that was the worst shade any color could ever be and his throat itched._

_No sound. _

_No words._

_No. Not words. Names. One name, the only name that mattered, the one he'd never get to use again because the person that went with it was—_

_(dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, just a dream, JUST A DREAM)  
_

_—dead and it was_

_All._

_His._

_Fault._

"Potter, if you don't stop screaming like that I am going to strangle you," grumbled Draco tiredly, his hand absently clasping Harry's own sweating palm. It tightened suddenly as he came fully awake and properly realized what he'd just said. "…what's wrong?"

"N…Nothing…" Harry said shakily, his chest still heaving slightly. "I just…I had…it's nothing…"

"Don't give me that. You woke me up screaming and you're sweating and unless you were having a _very_ interesting dream about me that I shall be happy to reenact for you then _something is wrong_."

He opened his eyes and closed them again abruptly, finding himself unable to so much as look at the other boy. "I'm fine. Just a nightmare."

"Nightmare?" Worried lips touched warmly against his shoulder. "What about?"

"…I…I don't really remember it…"

Draco pushed himself up with one hand, leaning over him to study his face intently. "You're lying," he said flatly.

Harry flushed. "Look, I said I don't remember it, all right?"

"Just because you said it doesn't make it true." He caught Harry's face with his free hand as he tried to turn away. "Why are you lying to me about something that stupid?"

HI cheeks began to burn and he blinked furiously before and tears could worm their way out of his eyes. "It's not _stupid!_ It…ugh, never mind. I have to get back to the dormitory—"

Draco's hand closed around his wrist, keeping him from getting up. "That's not true either. It'll be hours before anyone even starts to wonder where you are."

He shook silently out of Draco's grasp. "I…I'll see you tomorrow, all right?"

"Whatever," Draco grumbled, dodging the kiss Harry tried to plant on his forehead and rolling over to face the wall in a huff.

OoOoOo

_FLASH! FLASH! Green light, so bright and yet so cold, freezing, or maybe that was something else FLASH there it was again and something (someone) fell THUD in front of him down on the ground dead like Cedric dead like his parents dead dead dead dead dead DEAD—_

"Harry!"

The sharp hiss of Ron's voice woke him suddenly and he rubbed the side of his face where it had apparently been pressing into a tea table for quite some time. "Wake up, mate, people are staring…"

"Do not be alarmed, my children!" said Professor Trelawney importantly, sweeping across the room to place an over-decorated hand on Harry's shoulder. "We are merely bearing witness to The Sight at its most vivid! My dear boy, do tell the class of your vision!" she said eagerly.

Harry frowned. "It wasn't a bloody _vision_, I fell asleep," he muttered, shifting uncomfortably under the stares of his classmates.

"But you went all fidgety!" said Lavender.

"And you were mumbling things!" insisted Parvati.

"It wasn't a very good sleep," he said shortly.

Professor Trelawney blinked slowly. "Come, my child, there is no need to deny your gift in the company of friends."

The looks his fellow students were giving him could hardly be described as friendly.

_They're…afraid of me…_

He sat up as straightly as he could manage on his pouf and blinked innocently at Professor Trelawney. "Actually, Professor, do you think I could go to the hospital wing? I think it might…er…uncloud my sight….so I can remember my…vision better."

Her face brightened instantly. "But of course. Do let us know when it's cleared up, we shall all be _very_ keen to hear about it!"

Harry tried not to make contact with any of the gossip-hungry, raptly attentive eyes that lingered on him as he gathered his books.

"Yeah. Definitely."

OoOoOo

"Oi! Potter!"

Harry's neck twisted sharply as he turned around. "Parkinson? Is the lesson over already?"

"No," said Pansy simply.

Harry frowned. "Then what—"

"Prefect things," she said. "Very, very important prefect things. Or that's what I told Umbridge, anyway…what're you doing out of class?

"Hospital wing."

"Don't look sick to me."

"I'm not."

"Supposed to give you a detention for that."

"Are you going to?"

"No."

The stared uncomfortably at one another for another few moments."

"Oh _bollocks_, he told you, didn't he?"

Harry's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Told me what?"

Pansy bit her lip her face loosing a little color. "O-Oh! Nothing. Er. Nothing. I thought. Er. Sorry. Forget I said anything!"

"You mean Draco? What are you talking about? Told me _what?_"

"Absolutely nothing! I did not say _one bloody word_ about Draco!" Her expression softened suddenly. "But…"

"But?"

"If you want, I'll help you get him out of this lesson. He's really…worried about you. Hasn't talked about anything else all day."

Harry chewed his lip, his desire to finish his interrogation fighting valiantly against a new concern for Draco.

"…I…all right. Fine."

OoOoOo

"I can't _fucking_ believe her," Draco growled.

Harry shifted his weight to his other foot, leaning against the wall with a tense expression. "Should I have stopped her? I thought you…she said you were worried about me or something…"

Draco frowned. "I was. I _am_. But she didn't have to do it in the middle of a lesson."

Harry snorted. "If I'm not embarrassed, you're not allowed to be. What was it she said? I 'needed your moral assistance'?"

"Don't underestimate the role of your mentor, Potter," said Draco, smirking a little despite himself.

"Er…Draco…there's something else…" Harry began awkward as Draco brace his hands against the wall behind Harry, mercury eyes boring into his own with an almost predatory glint. "Parkinson said…she mentioned…I dunno what, exactly, she never got round to telling me what she was on about but—"

"Is talking really what you dragged me out of a lesson for, Potter?" cooed Draco suggestively, biting gently at his earlobe.

Harry swallowed, his body already tensing in response. "Y...Yes! Yes it _is_."

Draco's hand slipped under the waistband of his pants. "Doesn't _feel_ like you want to talk."

He ignored his body's deafening, insistent shout that talking could indeed wait for another time.

"Just…just tell me you're not hiding anything from me and I'll believe you."

Heat rose again in his cheeks as Draco's mouth locked with his own. But no answer came.

"Draco…"

"I love you, you know that?" said the blonde earnestly, his tongue touching against the hollow behind Harry's ear as he undid the smaller boy's trousers with a few quick, deft movements. "And I'd never do anything to hurt you. Ever."

Harry's arms folded around his shoulders. His trousers dropped to the floor. "…I know."

He groaned slightly as Draco pressed against him, separating Harry's legs with his own knee. "Do you trust me?"

His chest hitched with short, shallow breaths as Draco pushed inside him. "…I love you…" His legs locked around Draco's waist. "I love you—"

_FLASH FLASH FLASH. Not like the nightmare. Where was he? And where was Draco FLASH something wrong someone's angry FLASH not green not yet but if something doesn't happen—_

"—so—"

_—soon then FLASH idiots, all of them, worthless filth FLASH no words just_ _angry, furious FLASH FLASH FLASH and god his scar—_

"—much—"

_—hurt like fire and FLASH—_

"POTTER! POTTER, ANSWER ME!"

_—and there they were (oh god how he wished they weren't) those dark._

_Red._

_Eyes._

_And suddenly someone wasn't so angry anymore._

"POTTER!"

He blinked away tears he didn't quite remember crying, letting out a long shuddering breath as his eyes met the horrified gray ones of the boy peering concernedly down at him.

"…Dra…co?"

"Oh _god_, what did I do? Do you need the hospital wing? Wh-what…" His eyes clouded momentarily with a threatening sheen of moisture that disappeared before Harry could be sure he'd even seen it at all.

He chewed his lip to keep the pain still reverberating through his skull from showing on his face. "No! Draco, it was nothing like that, I'm fine!"

Draco's right arm shot up suddenly, pinning both of Harry's over his head by the wrists. "That. Was _not_. Nothing!" he growled.

Harry's back arched and he panted loudly. Draco had not pulled out of him during his little blackout. "Hnn…l-let go of my arms…I don't want to do it like this…"

Draco remained deathly still for what felt like an eternity before pulling away with a cold, angry look. "Don't," he warned acidly when Harry made an apologetic move to touch his face.

"I'm sorry," said Harry quietly. Draco looked deliberately away from him, plopping angrily into an armchair that had popped obligingly into existence on the other side of the room.

"I don't want you to be _sorry_, Potter, I want you to tell me what the hell is going on with you!"

Harry stared intently at the floor. "I…"

"You _what?_"

"…I should go."

Draco snorted. "Oh by all means, Potter. Don't let me keep you."

OoOoOo

_There were too many bloody stairs in this castle._

_Honestly, this was how many flights? Nine? Ten? Out of breath, his heart thumping in his ears (and wide awake, much as it stil felt like dreaming) as he raced down and down and down and a corridor finally (empty, thank god, though it wouldn't have stopped him now if every member of every house in all of Hogwarts had been standing there staring at him and he hammered his fist hard against the closed office door until something stirred reluctantly on the other side of it._

"Potter," said Snape in a flat, annoyed, and mildly disgusted tone, which was apparently the closest to a friendly greeting he was capable of.

Harry ground his molars irritably, fighting the urge to be as unspeakable rude as he would've liked. "Look. You already know about me and Draco."

There was no response to this.

"...and...he's...you're his godfather, aren't you?"

Obsidian eyes bored unhappily into his own. Harry fidgeted.

"So...if you care about him like mine does about me...you wouldn't let him...you wouldn't let anything happen to him just because...you..."

"Is there a point hiding somewhere in this conversation, Potter?"

"I...need to learn Occlumency," said Harry stiffly.

For a moment Snape did nothing but stare at him in a deeply annoyed manner.

"Hmph. I'm certainly not going to teach it to you in the corridor," he said finally, backing out of the doorway and gesturing Harry inside with an irritated sigh of resignation.

_

* * *

(a further a/n: Right, look, I know the nightmare sequences are unspeakably lame but for god's sake I write romantic comedies. I have NO idea how to write creepy scary things. They are meant to be frantic and are instead spazzy. Kindly ignore them._

_P.S._

_Apparently Harry and Draco can no longer have sex without being interrupted in some horrible manner. Just accept this fact._

_P.P.S._

_...Re-wrote the end of the chapter...it was annoying me...and actually it is still annoying, but I cannot be bothered to fix it twice.)_


	18. True

**Disclaimer: **In a sense, doesn't Harry Potter really belong to all the children of the world? Oh no, hang on, some lawyers are telling me that no, he belongs to J.K., the children of the world can get stuffed, and if I keep filling their heads with silly ideas I am going to be sued.

Nevermind.

_(a/n: YES. I HAVE RETURNED. YOU MAY NOW CUE THE FANFARE._

_Or not, considering a) this chapter is awful, and b) you probably still want to kill me for disappearing for so unforgivably long._

_Either reason is pretty understandable.)_

* * *

Chapter 18: True

_I find it so hard to be true  
And all these lies I'm telling you  
Are little anchors in my chest  
That pull us down into this mess_

—_The Frames_

* * *

Harry had really though that by the fifteenth time the image of him having vigorous sex with one of his classmates had been vividly projected into his professor's mind it would have gotten at least a _little_ less embarrassing.

"That's…enough," said Snape with what Harry could have sworn was a hint of discomfort.

Harry swallowed over the tense lump of embarrassment clogging his throat. "N-No! Just—Just do it again, I've got to learn this!"

"That is hardly obvious from your performance, Potter."

Harry gritted his teeth angrily. "Don't you think I'm trying?"

"And if Draco Malfoy is murdered, I sincerely doubt the fact that you _tried_ will offer you much in the way of comfort."

Harry stared at him in blank, horrified silence.

Snape blinked coldly. "Potter, if you wish to hear a series of reassuring lies, the headmaster's office is upstairs. _Legilimens!_"

He cringed inwardly as the room around him faded from view.

_Oh god_. He felt himself go scarlet. Why did it have to be _this_? God, even listening to his parents being _murdered_ wasn't as bad as Snape seeing the time he'd talked Draco into using restraints…

_Focus,_ he ordered himself firmly. A little embarrassment was_ nothing_ to the consequences of failure. If he didn't learn this, Draco might—

The office was back.

But there was something…wrong with it. A slightly hazy quality he didn't quite remember being present a few minutes before…almost like…

_A memory!_

But it wasn't his.

He struggled to concentrate as it came into clearer focus.

"…surely there is someone_ else_ you can…consult about these sorts of things, Draco."

Snape.

"You _know_ there isn't, Severus!"

And…Draco?

"It is not my place to—"

"Whose is it then? Hm? Am I supposed to talk to—to _Father_ about this? It's his fault to begin with!"

"Perhaps one of your classmates would be better suited to—"

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Severus, I've only got one friend and _she_ really can't help me with this!

"And how exactly is it that _I _am supposed to help you, Draco?"

"Just—Just tell me what I'm supposed to _do_! I don't know what…_how the hell am I supposed to tell him I've got to chuck him again?"_

"I think it would be best," said Snape flatly as Harry opened his eyes to the dank reality of the _actual_ office, "if we left the lesson here for tonight."

OoOoOo

"Potter!"

_I can't talk to him now._

"Potter, hang on!"

_I can't even look at him._

"Merlin, will you slow down?"

_Or I'll just end up…_

A hand caught his.

_…forgetting all about it._

"Where're you running off to like that? Are you still cross with me about yesterday?"

Harry frowned, staring intently at a wall several feet behind Draco's head. "No."

Draco sighed. "Look, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I'm sorry. You…you just can't _scare_ me like that, all right?"

"I…I'm late for something, Draco."

Draco's brow furrowed in annoyance. "Potter."

"Hm?"

"You're mad at me."

Harry's face scrunched guiltily and he finally let his eyes meet Draco's. "Don't be stupid. You haven't even done anything." _Not yet._

Gentle hands cupped his face suddenly, tilting it back for a light kiss. "You'd tell me if I had, wouldn't you?"

Harry closed his eyes, momentarily losing his train of though in Draco's mouth.

"I should go," he said in a low voice, pulling away.

"But you won't. Not if I ask you not to."

"I…" _Don't look at him. Don't look at him_. "I…" _Don'tlookathimdon'tlookathimDon't. Look. At. Him!_ "I'll see you tomorrow, all right?" he blurted hurriedly, moistening eyes trained on the floor as he bolted away.

OoOoOo

"Harry."

Harry buried himself deeper in the sea of bedclothes on his four poster, groaning incoherently.

"Harry, Malfoy's outside."

"Mm."

"He wants to know if you're cross with him."

"Mm."

"He won't go away."

"Mm."

"People are starting to stare."

"Mm."

"Harry…"

"Look, just leave me alone, Ron. I don't…I can't talk to him right now."

There was roughly half a minute of silence.

"He says he's not abandoning his duty as your mentor just because you feel like having a hissyfit and he's going to start docking you points if your scrawny arse isn't out in that hallway in the next two minutes."

"Tell him to stuff it."

The curtains of his bed were yanked unceremoniously open. "Right. What the hell is _wrong_ with you today?"

Harry pressed his face into his pillow. "Nothing."

"Like _hell _it's nothing." Ron frowned. "He can't have chucked you again or he wouldn't be outside pining like an idiot…"

Harry snorted.

"C'mon. Get up."

"Don't want to."

"Seriously, mate. I don't even _like_ Malfoy, but you can't just mess someone about like this—"

"_I'm_ messing _him_ about?" Harry started to say indignantly, but quieted halfway through. He didn't really feel like explaining this to Ron. "Never_mind_. You wouldn't understand."

"Understand _what?_"

"_Nothing_! God! I'm _going_!"

OoOoOo

The minute he and Draco were alone he knew it had been a _terrible_ idea.

"You shouldn't've kept me waiting like that!" said Draco sharply, mouth latching instantly onto Harry's neck as the door closed behind them. "I had to keep coming up with excuses…"

Harry's arms locked around his shoulders, disregarding his brain's orders to push him away. "I'm sorry. I was…thinking…"

Draco pulled back to look at him, tilting his head with concern. "Hm? What about?"

"Just…" he sighed. God, it would be so much _easier_ to just forget the whole stupid thing, just let Draco kiss him and hold him and do whatever else he wanted, just pretend he'd never seen any stupid memory, just…just…

"Just what?" asked Draco, eyes narrow with worry.

Harry grinned weakly. "Nothing."

A confused smile crossed the blonde's face. "You're weird sometimes, you know that?"

Harry didn't say anything. He didn't say anything when Draco kissed him again, he didn't say anything as they slipped out of their clothes, he didn't say anything during the twenty minutes of hurried, silent sex that followed.

He didn't say anything as tense grey eyes met his own, as soft fingers brushed the hair from his forehead.

"I wish you'd tell me what's wrong."

Harry tucked his head into the warm space between Draco's chin and his bare chest, and didn't say anything.

* * *

_(a further a/n: yes, I know that seemed a lot more like a pensieve than occlumency, but really, if I wasn't completely lazy, don't you think I'd've updated this story at any point in the last month and a half?)_


	19. Happy

**Disclaimer: **…are we still doing this? _Really?_

_(a/n: Oh so hey._

_Imma finish this fic now._

_Now, now, I know what you're thinking. "But K-san, you abandoned this LITERALLY OVER A YEAR AGO WHAT THE HELL I WAS READING THAT GODDAMMIT."_

_Um._

_Well._

_I had…things._

_To do._

_You know._

_And._

_Uh._

_I did them. _

_And now I'm done.)  
_

_(A further a/n:…okay I was writing porn. Like a seriously outrageous amount of porn you guys, you don't even know. But even after all that porn I still feel bad about not at least wrapping this up first.)_

_(A further, further a/n: …okay, so __**MendaciousMinx**__ made me finish. Like literally _made_ me, to the point of actually sitting down and forcing me to write it at metaphorical gunpoint. To the point of playing the role of every secondary character in this chapter. To the point where she gets her own hideously long author's note, in fact.)_

_(Co-a/n: I WOULD LIKE TO FORMALLY APOLOGIZE. For stealing Eden from you for approximately one year. Which must have felt more like one MILLION, given that she is a golden goddess of all things, etc., and to live without her work is equal to or greater than the agony suffered each day by Prometheus as Zeus' eagle tears at his flesh and devours his liver and so on._

_THE POINT IS. I met Eden about a year ago, which makes me directly responsible for this fics abandonment. You know all that porn she wrote? I helped. My characters had filthy, filthy sex with her characters for a WHOLE YEAR and I am not sorry. For that part. I am sorry I stole her, as I stated above, but it really couldn't be helped, otherwise HOW WOULD GERVAISE HAVE SURVIVED without Gregory's MASSIVE PENIS._

_I got off-track again didn't I. I did. Anyway, after a year in which Eden and I traveled the universe in a blue Police Box defeating the Fire Lord and generally fighting Space Crime (If you count the unnecessary capital letters in that sentence you'll notice that there are six. This is because those things are Important and not because I spent Too Much Time writing Beat Poetry in High School), I've finally begged and bartered Eden into finishing this fic. And it will get finished god DAMMIT. It will get finished if I have to DESTROY EARTH AND ALL OF ITS INHABITED NEIGHBORING PLANETS._

_And it will be Awesome.)_

_

* * *

  
_

Chapter 19: Happy

_Come help me out I'm sick from the fight  
From inserting a laugh where there's none  
Show me where this joke got tired  
Tell me you know cause I'm slow catching on…_

—_The Frames_

_

* * *

  
_

They were doing it _again._

Ron and Hermione were sitting across the table from Harry, gazing at each other in a manner that could be described in many ways (all of which involved some form of unpleasantly sticky, sweet substance), holding one another's hands and blushing.

And if that weren't enough, the words certainly were.

"Did...Did you do something different to your hair?"

"Why? Don't you like it?"

"Of course I like it! I never said I didn't like it! I only meant it's different, is all, not that I, er, I mean it's, I just thought maybe you did something with it or, I dunno, just..."

"Only I thought you might not like it."

"It's beautiful!"

"What, just now? It wasn't all right before?"

"It's always beautiful. _You're _always beautiful."

"Oh, Ron..."

"Shut. _Up,"_ said Harry very slowly with lifting his head off the table. "Both of you just _shut up _already, will you?"

They jumped slightly, both having forgotten he was there.

"Blimey, Harry," Ron said, a concerned frown interrupting his freckles. "Did one of Neville's toadstools jump down your throat? You look like you're gonna be _sick."_

Harry sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Yeah. I mean no. Sorry. What?"

"He's got these hopping toadstool things. With faces. They're suicidal I think, one wandered into my eggs at breakfast yesterday and I could hear it reciting bad poetry from my stomach _all morning_." He pulled a face. "That and it tasted bloody _awful_."

"...sure. Yeah. Toadstools." He sighed quietly, his gaze wandering absently toward the Slytherin table. "Miserable, aren't they..."

"Yeah, and _terrible_."

But Hermione followed Harry's eyes to land on a head of immaculately combed blond hair. "...Something the matter?"

A bright, fixed smile leapt onto Harry's face. "Hm? What d'you mean?"

She sighed. "Nothing." Turning back to Ron, she let out a poorly suppressed giggle. "Ron, you're supposed to put your food in your mouth. Your forehead's not generally involved in any part of the process."

Ron crossed his eyes trying to see the bit of egg between them. "Er..."

This time the giggle went unstifled. "Here, let me..." She picked up a napkin and tidied him up, her fingers lingering on his cheek. "There, all better..."

"Thanks..." His flush ran up to the roots of his hair and delved into the territory below the collar of his shirt.

"Don't mention it..."

"Yeah all right just bend her over the table, why don't you, Ron," Harry grumbled, his expression twisting into a dull, sour frown. "Not like people are trying to eat or anything."

Ron's head snapped up, his eyes widening. "I wasn't—I didn't—I—"

Hermione glared across the table at Harry. "I'm sorry," she snapped, "Is our existence bothering you?"

"You don't think," Harry grumbled, staring menacingly down at his breakfast, "that maybe not everyone on the planet wants to watch you two fawning over each other like idiots twenty-four bloody hours a day?"

"Maybe I don't care what everybody else thinks." She grabbed Ron's hand.

"C'mon now," Ron said nervously, "There's no reason anybody should be upset..."

"Yeah. Well. Maybe you should. Because maybe everybody else thinks it's _really fucking annoying_."

"Really?" she growled, fingers tapping irritably on the table. "Is that what everybody thinks? Because you're the only one who seems to give a hinkypunk's hiney."

"Yeah well _you _wouldn't know, would you, seeing as you'd have to stop snogging him for ten minutes to notice—" He blinked. "Give a _what_?"

Hermione stood. "I have had _just about enough_, Harry! I have had enough of your _bitching_ and your _moaning _and your _constant need to remind me_ what a_ misery_ the world is when the only time it's _miserable_ for me is the minute you open your _mouth_!"

For a moment after her verbal barrage ended Hermione just stood there, nostrils flaring, both hands flat on the table, glaring venomously down at him. Then, with one last infuriated sound, she upended the contents of his glass into his lap.

"Come on, Ron," she snarled, grabbing the redhead's sleeve and making her way toward the doors.

Ron made a few timid noises in the back of his throat, but followed meekly.

"Oh." She swiveled, just before reaching the door. "And a _hinkypunk_, as you learned in _third year,_ is a one-legged bog creature that lures people into the marshes and _kills them._ As it's only effective if the victim is a misguided _idiot,_ I'd keep an_ eye_ out!"

Her stomping footsteps echoed through the Great Hall for several moments after she and Ron had vanished.

"I—you—_Hermione!_"

He fell silent for a moment.

"I _know_ what a hinkypunk is!"

"No you don't," someone quipped from behind him. "You slept through class that day."

"That was _two years ago_ do you _ever _forget_ anything _you _stupid_ oh. Ginny." His cheeks colored faintly. "Er. Hi."

"Hey," she said brightly, sitting down next to him. "So. Hermione told you off and it was hilarious. Fill in the blanks."

He sank back into his seat with a frown. "There aren't any. She's just mental. They're both mental."

Ginny made a vague noise of disbelief.

"Well they _are_."

"Obviously."

"It's not even any of your business."

"'Course not."

"I mean—I mean they just—they're not thinking, you know?" He leaned back in his seat, teeth gritting in a tight, pained sort of grimace as he began to rock absently. "They're not even _thinking_. They're all laughs and smiles now but it doesn't _work_, none of it works, not for anyone, not _ever_ and you can _smile_ all you want but it doesn't make anyone _happier _and it won't make him stop _lying_ and it won't make him _stay _and he's just—just going to close up again like before and it'll all be for _nothing_ and—and—"

"Breathe."

"—and wanting people to be fixed doesn't make them any less _broken_!" He braced his hands against the table, wondering vaguely how long they'd been shaking like that. "...it...it just _doesn't, _all right?"

"No," Ginny replied earnestly. "It doesn't work that way, even if we all wish it would. There's a bit more work involved."

"It doesn't matter, though, does it," he said quietly. "How much she works. It doesn't matter. He'll still ruin everything. He'll still pretend everything's fine when they both know it's not. He'll still smile at her like the _liar _he is and let her think he loves her. And she'll want him enough, she'll be _stupid _enough not to care." His teeth sank into his lip. "And then he'll leave anyway because it _doesn't fucking matter_."

"Did Malfoy dump you?"

"For the millionth time, _no_, he's just—" His gaze snapped up. "I—what do you mean, _dump,_ it's not like he's—like we're—because we're _not, _don't be stupid, that—that'd be _mad_—"

"'Course not, daft of me. So in a hypothetical scenario in which you might, contrary to any logic or reason, be playing 'hide-the-wand' with the Ferret Queen, he, hypothetically, would not have dumped you?"

"He'd have to be dating me to have dumped me and he isn't dating me so _no."_

"I didn't say 'dating', I said 'playing hide-the-wand'. And it's hypothetical. Completely hypothetical. Not in any way related to the real world in which you have not, of course, had tons of dirty, dirty broom closet sex with Draco Malfoy."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Fire away."

"Is there anyone who _doesn't _know I'm shagging Malfoy?"

"No."

He put his head in his hands and sighed. "Brilliant."

"Look at it this way. You've skipped that awkward 'coming out' business. Everybody knows you're flying for the other team."

"I don't care about that," he snapped. "People already think I'm mental, what does it matter if they think I'm mental _and_ gay?"

"Half-full."

"Oh you're definitely full of something."

Ginny stood up, clapping her hands. "Well! I've had about as much of this as I can take." She yanked Harry to his feet. "Come on."

"Ginny whatever it is I don't want to do it. And anyway I've got...things." He coughed. "Things to do. Loads of...things that need doing…"

Ginny wasn't listening. She dragged him across the Great Hall, only stopping when they were standing directly behind Draco's seat.

"Oi. Ferret."

"Oi. Weasel," Draco returned in a bored sort of tone. "What do you want, Ginger, I'm eating."

"I hate to break up your charming little garden party, but I have a delivery for you." She shoved Harry down into the seat next to Draco.

Harry waved awkwardly. "…hi."

"...Right." Draco blinked, displaying no emotion in particular as he slid his chair back. "Better just...finish this later, Pansy, I'll meet you back in the common room." His fingers trailed against Harry shoulder when he stood, too quickly for anyone else to notice. "Remember what I said."

"Hey. _Hey_." Ginny planted her hands on her hips. "Where the bloody _hell _do you think you're going?"

"Lost my appetite."

"Like hell you did. You sit your smarmy Slytherin _arse_ right back in that chair where it _belongs."_

"I can't." A faint flicker of pain shot through his expression as his gaze caught Harry's, disappearing so quickly he wasn't sure he'd seen it at all. "I _really_ haven't got time for this, Ginger, must be going..."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "It's _Ginny_. If you're not careful, I'll make _sure _you remember it."

"And _terrifying_ though that sounds I really have to leave. Now." He chewed his lip, staring at Harry for a moment as though about to speak.

"Draco—" Harry began quietly.

"_Do _enjoy yourselves while I'm gone. I'm sure you've got ever so much to talk about."

They watched him go in silence. When he'd finally vanished through the doors of the Great Hall, Ginny snorted. "Charming as a lead pipe, that one." She turned to Pansy. "Miracle you don't get lead poisoning drinking downriver from him."

"Er..." Pansy's face seemed to be trying to decide between the colors pink and crimson. It settled on a nice fuchsia. "I...guess so? He's...not so bad, really..."

Ginny shrugged. "Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. Harry, do yourself a favor and either sit him down and have it out with him or stuff rocks in his pockets and push him in the lake. I like the latter for simplicity, but that's just my opinion." She wandered off, hands in her pockets, likely to see what other love lives were lying around waiting to have havoc wreaked upon them.

Pansy stared after her. "Bye..."

"...what are you staring at her like that for?"

Her eyes snapped up to the ceiling of the Great Hall. "Who?"

_"Ginny._ And you're doing it again, _stop_ that!"

Pansy hurriedly looked away to stare determinedly at her food. "Dunno what you're talking about."

"Yes you do, you look at her all funny, like...like you..." His eyes narrowed as something clicked into place. "You _fancy_ her."

"You're _mental,"_ Pansy snapped, glaring into her tea. "Bugger off."

"You _do!_ God, Draco said you were like us but I didn't think—_Ginny?"_

She bared her teeth. "Look. _Git._ If you've got a problem with me or who I _fancy_, you can just shove it up your Gryffindor _arse _for all it matters to _me."_

"But Ginny likes _boys._ Ginny likes a different bloody boy every week, I know, I'm the one that's got to listen to Ron go on about it all the time—"

Pansy slammed her hands down on the table. "Don't you _dare_ talk about her like she's some kind of-- of _tart!"_

"Who's calling her a tart? She's practically my sister. And if you don't fancy her then what do you care what anyone says?"

"Just—" She crossed her arms indignantly. "Just looking out for her. You know. Being nice. Piss _off."_

"Yeah. You. Being nice. Bet that's it."

Pansy swiveled to face him. "Where do _you _get off judging _me? I'm_ not getting myself _buggered_ every night by some bloke who doesn't even _talk_ to him. _I'm_ not the one who can't wrap his insecure little _brain_ around a problem if it's staring him in the eyes. _I'm_ not the one who's scared _shitless_ just because he doesn't want to think that maybe, just _maybe_ it's not as _perfect_ as he thought it was and he might not get his way for _once!"_

Harry's gaze dropped to the floor and he bit down hard on his lip to keep it from trembling. _I am _not_ going to cry, not in front of her, I won't let her see, I _won't_..._

Anyone who was listening would have _heard_ Pansy bite down on her tongue. A moment of awkward silence passed between them before she finally broke it. "...That...I didn't...I'm..." She sucked in a breath. "...Sorry..."

"Did—Did he say something?" Harry said in a strained voice through the hand he'd pressed over his mouth. "To you, I mean, did he say anything to you about—about—" He took a long, shuddering breath. "—because he won't—it's been_ weeks_—I don't know what to do anymore..."

Pansy was looking increasingly uncomfortable. "Look, Pot—Harry. He just..." She ran a hand through her hair. "He's...complicated, you know? I'm...I'm sure it's fine."

"It's _not, _you're his friend, you _know _it's not, you _said _it's not and you can't take it back now." He forced himself to meet her eyes. "If you know _anything..._just...just _please..."_

"I..." For a moment she looked like she might tell him, might give him all the answers he wanted...

"I'm really not the person you should be discussing this with." Pansy stood, hovering awkwardly for a few brief seconds before turning to head for the exit.

"Parkinson! Don't—" He jumped up, trailing desperately after. "Please! You know he won't talk to me! _Parkinson!"_

She hesitated, turning to face him so quickly that he almost knocked her over. "I'm sorry, I can't, you just—" Seemingly without thought, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. "For what it's worth, he never talks about anything but you. That's all I can give you, and I hope it helps. It might make it worse. I don't know." She released his hand, backing away. "I have to go."

"But—Parkinson, _wait!"_

But she didn't wait. She didn't wait and she didn't stop and she didn't do any of the thirty other things he yelled after her until his throat was so sore he couldn't get the words out.

Well.

At the very least, she hadn't seen him cry.

* * *

_(a further, further, further a/n: What, that first one wasn't long enough for you?_

_...right, look, I'm aware that that was not the most eventful chapter that ever was, but I'm sort of like trying to ease my way back into this stuff. Bear with me for a bit, I promise I'll be less earth-shatteringly dull next time. Really!)_


End file.
